Major consulting firm KPMG US has issued a positive conclusion following the first full independent audit of Tether's annual financial statements. The largest stablecoin issuer disclosed its results for 2025, revealing that the company's reserves exceeded its liabilities by $6.814 billion.
Auditors examined the company's balance sheets, income statement, and cash flow statements for the year. The verification covered the assets backing the issued tokens and the company's corresponding liabilities. As reported by Tether, the auditors' report confirmed that reserves exceed liabilities.
How a Full Audit Differs from Quarterly Reports
Previously, Tether only published quarterly auditor attestations — simplified verifications confirming the alignment of assets with issued tokens on a specific date. The full audit covered a much broader range of data: the company's transactions for the entire year; internal accounting systems; records of asset ownership; asset valuation methods; information about Tether's counterparties.
KPMG paid special attention to gold reserves: auditors personally inspected and recounted the bullion backing the Tether Gold token, rather than relying solely on custodian data. Based on the review, KPMG issued an unqualified positive opinion, confirming that the financial statements fairly present the company's financial position, results of operations, and cash flows in all material respects in accordance with US accounting standards.
Profit Grows, $USDT Maintains Leadership
Tether launched the $USDT stablecoin in 2014 and has since become one of the largest companies in the crypto industry. For 2025, the company's net profit exceeded $10 billion, with US Treasury bond investments remaining the primary source of income.
$USDT remains Tether's key product and dominates the stablecoin market. The token's market capitalization is approximately $183 billion — roughly 61% of the total stablecoin market volume ($301 billion). This is more than double the figure of its closest competitor, Circle's $USDC, whose market cap is about $72 billion, according to data from DefiLlama.
Business Diversification
Tether directs profits from its core business to expand beyond stablecoins. This year, the company invested $20 million each in Argentine neobank Ualá and Brazilian crypto platform Mercado Bitcoin, and also led a $50 million funding round for AI sleep technology developer Eight Sleep.
Tokenized gold is also developing: the physical reserves backing Tether Gold ($XAUt) grew by 9.5% in the second quarter. At the time of publication, $XAUt remains the largest tokenized commodity product with a volume of approximately $2.7 billion.
Despite business growth, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has so far shown no interest in taking the company public. In June 2025, amid rumors of a possible Tether IPO, he wrote on social media platform X that there is no need to go public.
AI Opinion
Analysis of the historical context shows: Tether's reporting has often faced criticism. In 2021, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined the company $41 million for misleading statements about the full backing of its tokens with dollar reserves — at that time, actual reserve coverage was recorded on only 27.6% of the days in the studied period. The full audit by KPMG closes an issue that has been the company's main vulnerability in the eyes of regulators and institutional investors for years.
A technical aspect that remains beyond the scope of the article: the audit covers the status on one specific date — December 31, 2025 — not continuous monitoring of reserves throughout the year. The difference between an audit and continuous auditing is fundamental for a company whose reserves are measured in tens of billions of dollars and change daily. Whether Tether will adhere to a strategy of annual audits or transition to more frequent reporting is a question that will determine the extent to which the company deserves the trust of investors and regulators.
