Tether announced on August 13 that KPMG U.S. has audited Tether International, S.A. de C.V. for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, issuing an unqualified opinion. The audited accounts showed reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814 billion. KPMG examined the balance sheet, income statement, cash flows, changes in equity, and the underlying records supporting them.

The milestone carries weight beyond a routine accounting exercise. Tether has grown into one of the world's largest holders of U.S. government debt, with more than $140 billion in Treasury exposure, while USDT sits at the center of a stablecoin market used across exchanges, payments, emerging markets, and decentralized finance protocols. Tether's balance sheet now spans U.S. Treasuries, gold, Bitcoin, secured loans, and other investments, making the quality and liquidity of those assets increasingly important alongside their total value. The audit also arrives as transparency has become a competitive differentiator among stablecoin issuers, with rivals such as Circle having emphasized their own attestation and compliance practices in seeking institutional and regulatory trust.

KPMG's Scope Went Beyond Previous Reserve Reviews

Tether has published quarterly reserve attestations through BDO for years, while Deloitte separately reviewed the reserves behind Tether-linked USA₮ earlier in 2026. Those engagements focused on specified reserve information. KPMG instead audited Tether International's annual financial statements, including transactions, systems, ownership records, valuations, and counterparties across the wider business.

According to Tether, KPMG physically counted and inspected every individual gold bar it held, including identifying information attached to each bar. Rather than relying solely on internal ledgers or custodian statements, the physical inspection provided independent verification that the gold recorded in the accounts actually exists.

What the Unqualified Opinion Covers

KPMG issued an unqualified opinion on Tether's 2025 financial statements, finding no material issue requiring a qualification. Tether says the accounts were prepared under U.S. GAAP and the audit was conducted under AICPA auditing standards. Descriptions circulating online characterizing it as a PCAOB audit go beyond what Tether has disclosed.

The opinion covers the financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2025. It does not guarantee that USDT will always maintain its peg, nor does it remove market and liquidity risk from the assets held after that date.

Tether's excess reserves provide room to absorb losses, but the strength of that protection depends on the underlying portfolio. Short-term Treasuries carry very different liquidity and volatility characteristics from Bitcoin, gold, or secured lending. With Tether managing a broader investment portfolio, the mix, maturity, and liquidity of those holdings matter alongside the headline size of the balance sheet.

Years of Regulatory Scrutiny

A Big Four opinion carries particular significance for Tether because doubts over the quality and accuracy of its backing disclosures have followed the company for years. In 2021, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered Tether to pay a $41 million penalty over statements concerning USDT's backing. The regulator found that Tether had represented USDT as fully backed by corresponding fiat reserves during a period when that was not consistently the case. The CFTC also cited earlier statements about professional audits when Tether had not completed one.

KPMG's opinion does not change what happened during that period. However, it does remove a long-standing criticism: Tether can no longer be accurately described as having never completed a full annual financial audit.

The Full Report Remains Unpublished

Tether's announcement describes KPMG's opinion and the scope of its work, but the complete signed audit report and audited financial statements are not attached. Those documents would provide more detail on asset classification, valuation methods, accounting policies, related-party exposure, and areas where management judgment was required. Until they are published, outside readers cannot examine the full notes behind KPMG's opinion for themselves.

Tether also says its products are used by more than 650 million people. That figure comes from the company and should not be presented as a user count independently verified by KPMG.

Regulatory Questions Persist

A clean financial audit does not settle separate regulatory questions surrounding USDT. Reserve requirements, permitted assets, and rules for foreign stablecoin issuers still apply independently of KPMG's opinion. In the European Union, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation has imposed reserve composition, disclosure, and authorization requirements on stablecoin issuers since 2024, and similar frameworks are advancing in other jurisdictions. U.S. stablecoin rules could therefore affect USDT even with stronger financial reporting.

The next benchmark is whether Tether publishes the complete audited statements and repeats the audit process annually. If annual Big Four audits become routine rather than exceptional, Tether will have done more than answer a long-standing criticism of its own reserves — it will have raised the transparency standard against which every major stablecoin issuer is increasingly measured.