A stablecoin is backed when the issuer holds assets equal to or greater than the tokens in circulation and lets holders redeem tokens for that value, according to Stablecoin Insider. Whether
A stablecoin is backed when the issuer holds assets equal to or greater than the tokens in circulation and lets holders redeem tokens for that value, according to Stablecoin Insider. Whether a reader can trust that claim depends on which document is being pointed to — an attestation, a full audit, or an on-chain proof-of-reserves feed — because each one verifies a different thing, and none of them verifies everything.
An attestation is a narrow, point-in-time check. A CPA firm examines evidence for one specific claim — typically, that reserve assets equalled or exceeded tokens outstanding on a given date — and issues a report under the AICPA’s AT-C 205 standard, according to Spark Money. It confirms a snapshot. It says nothing about how reserves were managed the day before or the day after, per BitGo.
A full financial statement audit is broader. Conducted under GAAP and GAAS or PCAOB standards, it examines a full year of transactions, internal controls, counterparty risk and legal contingencies, and produces an opinion on whether the financial statements as a whole are fairly presented, according to Spark Money and BitGo. Until 2026, Spark Money and Stablecoin Insider both note, no major stablecoin issuer had published a completed one.
On-chain proof of reserves is a third layer again. Decentralized oracle networks such as Chainlink’s continuously report offchain balances to a blockchain so smart contracts can check collateralization automatically, according to Chainlink’s own description of the mechanism. That gives continuous visibility into assets. It does not show liabilities, and Stablecoin Insider makes the gap explicit: a dashboard proving reserves exist says nothing about whether those same assets are pledged elsewhere.
Tether said, in a CoinDesk report whose URL carries a 13 August 2026 date, that it had completed its first full financial audit, with KPMG US issuing what CoinDesk described as an unqualified opinion on Tether International’s financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025. That opinion means KPMG found the statements fairly presented Tether’s financial position, results and cash flows under US GAAP, per CoinDesk. Tether said the statements showed reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814 billion at the end of 2025, and CoinDesk reported that KPMG had gone as far as physically inspecting Tether’s gold bars.
A KPMG US spokesperson confirmed the firm issued the opinion but declined further comment, citing client confidentiality, per CoinDesk. Crypto Reporter reported that Tether has not released the underlying audit report, leaving the public with the topline conclusion and the one reserve figure Tether chose to disclose, rather than the full statements KPMG actually tested. Tether’s CEO Paolo Ardoino said in a statement carried by CoinDesk: For years, some detractors said an audit of Tether could not be completed. Tether separately described the engagement as the largest inaugural financial audit in history, according to Crypto Reporter.
That audit sits alongside, not instead of, Tether’s ongoing quarterly attestations, which are performed by BDO Italia under the international ISAE 3000 standard rather than the AT-C 205 standard used for USDC and Paxos, per Spark Money and Stablecoin Insider. Stablecoin Insider’s review of the Q4 2025 attestation put total reserve assets near $193 billion against USDT circulation of about $186 billion, with roughly $141 billion in direct and indirect Treasury exposure — about 82% of reserves. Spark Money, citing recent attestations as of its 14 June 2026 report, put USDT circulation at approximately $185 billion and described reserve composition as roughly 80% Treasury bills plus about $8 billion in gold, about $7 billion in Bitcoin, and an excess reserve buffer that has ranged between roughly $6 billion and $8 billion across recent quarters. CoinDesk’s figure for USDT’s market capitalization, from that same report, was $180 billion. Crypto University, in a guide last updated 15 July 2026, put USDT circulation at approximately $184 billion. None of these four figures — $180 billion, $184 billion, $185 billion, $186 billion — are from the same date, and this page does not reconcile them.
The figures in that table come from Spark Money’s and Stablecoin Insider’s independent reviews of issuer disclosures as of mid-2026. Circle’s USDC reserves stood at approximately $77.6 billion as of early 2026 per Spark Money, and roughly $80 billion as of Q1 2026 per Stablecoin Insider; Crypto University’s guide, last updated 15 July 2026, gave USDC circulation as approximately $73 billion. Circle publishes CUSIP-level Treasury holdings daily through the BlackRock fund page, according to Spark Money — a level of granularity neither Tether nor Paxos matches. Paxos moved from a New York state trust charter to national trust bank status regulated by the OCC in December 2025, a shift that Spark Money says legally requires reserves to be limited to cash and short-dated Treasuries held in bankruptcy-remote, segregated accounts; its attestation record dates back to 2018.
Tether’s transparency practices are shaped by its regulatory history. It began publishing quarterly attestations after a February 2021 settlement with the New York Attorney General, according to Crypto Reporter; Spark Money separately puts that settlement at $18.5 million. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission separately penalized Tether, with Spark Money reporting a $41 million fine over what the CFTC called untrue or misleading statements about reserves, and finding USDT was fully backed only 27.6% of the time across a 26-month period between 2016 and 2018. Crypto Reporter separately reported, citing Bloomberg, that Tether and its sister exchange Bitfinex agreed to pay a $42.5 million penalty later in 2021 concerning reserve disclosures; that figure and Spark Money’s $41 million figure are not reconciled in the evidence available for this page. Crypto Reporter also reported that Tether had sought to raise as much as $20 billion at a $500 billion valuation, and that some prospective investors were reportedly reluctant to commit without an independent audit in place, citing people familiar with the matter.
Crypto University’s practical guide, last updated 15 July 2026, suggests starting with the issuer’s own transparency page for the relevant token, checking the trading price against the $1.00 peg on an aggregator, then reading the attestation or audit report to note which firm performed it, under which standard, and as of which date. For crypto-collateralized tokens such as DAI, which the Maker/Sky protocol backs with on-chain collateral typically overcollateralized between 110% and 200% according to Stablecoin Insider, the equivalent check is a blockchain explorer or protocol dashboard rather than an accountant’s report. Stablecoin Insider’s view is that the strongest combination available in 2026 layers all three: on-chain supply data, frequent attestations, and a periodic full audit — because each covers a gap the others leave open, not because any one of them is sufficient alone.
This page cannot show what KPMG’s audit of Tether actually found beyond the single figure Tether chose to disclose — $6.814 billion in excess reserves — and the fact of an unqualified opinion. The underlying audit report has not been made public, according to Crypto Reporter, so a reader cannot independently check the line items KPMG tested. The 13 August 2026 date used above for that report is inferred from the CoinDesk article’s URL rather than stated as a publication date in the article’s own text, which describes itself only as published and updated “2 days ago.”
The circulation and reserve figures cited above for USDT come from four different outlets reporting at four different dates in 2026 — $180 billion, $184 billion, $185 billion and $186 billion — and this page has not attempted to reconcile them into one number; a reader checking Tether’s own transparency page will find whatever the current figure is, which will already be different from all four.
The status of the GENIUS Act’s legislative history is described inconsistently in the sources held for this page: BitGo’s account, dated 21 May 2026, describes it as having passed the Senate Banking Committee in 2025, while Stablecoin Insider describes it as signed into law on 18 July 2025. This page does not resolve which stage of the legislative process that reflects.
Every figure describing reserve composition — Treasury share, gold, Bitcoin, cash split — is self-reported by the issuer through its chosen accounting firm and examined under the scope of an attestation or audit engagement, not verified independently by this publication. Attestations and even full audits confirm a claim against evidence available to the accountant; they do not guarantee that reserves remain adequate on any date other than the one covered, and none of the reports described here address what happens to reserve value or liquidity in a stress scenario involving simultaneous large-scale redemptions.
Every fact above is attributed to one of these reports. Where they disagree, the article says so.
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