Tether reports $700 million Q4 net profit in latest attestation report

[Hydrogen]

• Tether issued its latest attestation report, saying its assets exceeded its liabilities as of December 2022.
• The company said it had a net profit of $700 million in Q4 — which it says is additional to its reserves.

Stablecoin issuer Tether released its latest attestation report on Thursday, reporting a "net profit" of $700 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, which it says is additional to its reserves.

"Tether's reserves remain extremely liquid, with the majority of its investments being held in cash, cash equivalents, and other short-term deposits," the company said in a statement while releasing its December report attested by accounting firm BDO. The report notes Tether's consolidated assets exceeded its liabilities as of Dec. 31, 2022.

Tether's consolidated total assets amounted to at least $67.04 billion as of the date, while its consolidated total liabilities amounted to $66.08 billion, per the statement, reflecting excess reserves of at least $960 million.

The $700 million profit is "part of shareholder equity, that is, what's in excess of reserves," a Tether spokesperson told The Block. "It's basically additional capital sitting in the company to further strengthen Tether," they added.

This is the first time Tether has disclosed profit figures. It, however, did not specify how the profit was realized.



Image link:  https://i.ibb.co/5FR4QmN/ss1.jpg

Last December, Tether said it will remove all secured loans from its backing in 2023 after The Wall Street Journal said the company's increasing roster of loans might make it unable to pay back redemptions in the event of a crisis. Per today's report, Tether has reduced its secured loans by $300 million.

Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino said in the statement that the company "once again proved its stability" in the troubled year of 2022. "Not only were we able to smoothly execute over $21 billion dollars in redemptions during the chaotic events of the year, but Tether has on the other side issued over $10 billion of USDT, an indication of continued organic growth and adoption of Tether," he said.

Tether eliminated commercial paper from its reserves last October. Its other assets include corporate bonds, funds and precious metals. Tether's USDT is the largest stablecoin in the market, with a supply of over 68 billion tokens, according to The Block's Data Dashboard.


https://www.theblock.co/post/210023/tether-reports-700-million-q4-net-profit-in-latest-attestation-report

....


Summary:

Stablecoin issuer Tether released its latest attestation report on Thursday, reporting a "net profit" of $700 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, which it says is additional to its reserves.

"Tether's reserves remain extremely liquid, with the majority of its investments being held in cash, cash equivalents, and other short-term deposits," the company said in a statement while releasing its December report attested by accounting firm BDO. The report notes Tether's consolidated assets exceeded its liabilities as of Dec. 31, 2022.

Tether's consolidated total assets amounted to at least $67.04 billion as of the date, while its consolidated total liabilities amounted to $66.08 billion, per the statement, reflecting excess reserves of at least $960 million.

Tether is weighing in with $67.04 billion dollars in market cap that FTX and SBF briefly enjoyed but could not hold on to.

$64.04 dollars in market cap. Am I the only one reads these figures imagining the President of el salvador with dollar signs shining in his eyes. The time is ripe to pump those geothermal crypto mines in el salvador to full operating capacity! Its a good day to legislate "digital nomad" travel visas which entice crypto whale investors to remain resident in places they normally would not have access to.

Many nations around the world are beginning to recognize they can attract billions of dollars in potentially taxable revenues. Could become motivated to legislate laws which are more friendly towards crypto using demographics.

Am I the only thinking along these lines? How do we envision the future?

[jackg]

Didn't tether seize assets in relation to tornado cash? I wonder if that's considered profit or if they had to hand over that money to somewhere else.

I don't think 1% is the most efficient rate they could've got either if they were holding liquid assets like bonds. Also it feels pretty risky to promote you've made a profit if you keep doing it and then go silent one quarter when you make a loss and kill off the token's value (even if they can buy it back, you might have to kyc and who wants to be doing that). Considering the detail of their balance sheet they've probably got quite a few employee salaries to pay so I guess there's that (meaning they might've made 3-5% instead which is what I'd think is reasonable if they're investing all their assets in treasury bonds or ~20% in corporate bonds).

It may sway opinions with most governments though like you say on how much and how well they should be adopting crypto.

[Captain Corporate]

To be fair, when you have in excess of 60 billion dollars, there are two things that keeps them from making even more money. First of all, it is hard because they have to keep it in things that are cash-like, so they can't just go buy oil futures with it, even though they can cash that out pretty quickly, if the price falls, they would be in big trouble, so it should be things that are strictly pegged to fiat. This causes them to not take any risks, which could give a better return. Secondly, they have too much money, way too much, 60+ billion to invest is not a small amount, so making a big profit from it is very hard, you can turn 60 dollars into 120 dollars easily, but not 60 billion to 120 billion, investing that much is very difficult.

[stompix]

To be fair, when you have in excess of 60 billion dollars, there are two things that keeps them from making even more money.

They have $67.04 billion in assets and $66.08 billion in liabilities, that is if we believe their numbers. So for that $66 billion, almost the entire sum is made out of assets that are supposedly backing the 1:1 USDT:$ value, it's not something they can invest to make more money and it shouldn't is used as such at all. Because if they do so, it's just playing with the user's funds and ending either like FTX or Luna, although that probably won't surprise anyone anymore.
But I have to admit, to see them getting without a scratch though last year and even making more money did come as a surprise.

Am I the only one reads these figures imagining the President of el salvador with dollar signs shining in his eyes. The time is ripe to pump those geothermal crypto mines in el salvador to full operating capacity!

Yeah, as the problem with those is that they are just on paper, vaporware with laser eyes, nothing more, you do realize two years have passed and nobody is talking about it because d'oh! there is nothing to talk about it and it was just another publicity stunt? I'm really getting bored of posting pictures with FSRU ships and showing everyone what's really happening there in terms of electricity, I feel like nobody cares about reality anymore.

[o48o]

-cut-
$64.04 dollars in market cap. Am I the only one reads these figures imagining the President of el salvador with dollar signs shining in his eyes. The time is ripe to pump those geothermal crypto mines in el salvador to full operating capacity! Its a good day to legislate "digital nomad" travel visas which entice crypto whale investors to remain resident in places they normally would not have access to.

Many nations around the world are beginning to recognize they can attract billions of dollars in potentially taxable revenues. Could become motivated to legislate laws which are more friendly towards crypto using demographics.

Am I the only thinking along these lines? How do we envision the future?

Ok now you lost me. What does President of el salvador or their crypto mining operations have anything to do with tether making profit? How are these things related?

But about taxation, i really doubt that I seriously doubt that el salvador has similar power to track down crypto users and tax them. Especially when citizens aren't using their own fiat money but are dependable of USD and BTC.

[coupable]

-cut-
$64.04 dollars in market cap. Am I the only one reads these figures imagining the President of el salvador with dollar signs shining in his eyes. The time is ripe to pump those geothermal crypto mines in el salvador to full operating capacity! Its a good day to legislate "digital nomad" travel visas which entice crypto whale investors to remain resident in places they normally would not have access to.

Many nations around the world are beginning to recognize they can attract billions of dollars in potentially taxable revenues. Could become motivated to legislate laws which are more friendly towards crypto using demographics.

Am I the only thinking along these lines? How do we envision the future?

Ok now you lost me. What does President of el salvador or their crypto mining operations have anything to do with tether making profit? How are these things related?

But about taxation, i really doubt that I seriously doubt that el salvador has similar power to track down crypto users and tax them. Especially when citizens aren't using their own fiat money but are dependable of USD and BTC.

The general percentage of crypto usage since the adoption decision was announced in El Salvador has not exceeded 6 percent. It is likely that the government will legalize the use of Tether as a more stable alternative to Bitcoin and encourage people to use crypto more.
This option has been on the table since the beginning, since the government wants to use a system that allows it to track citizen s' transfers, as well as the possibility of freezing those assets, which is what the Tether currency allows according to the protocol on which it was built.

[o48o]

The general percentage of crypto usage since the adoption decision was announced in El Salvador has not exceeded 6 percent. It is likely that the government will legalize the use of Tether as a more stable alternative to Bitcoin and encourage people to use crypto more.
This option has been on the table since the beginning, since the government wants to use a system that allows it to track citizen s' transfers, as well as the possibility of freezing those assets, which is what the Tether currency allows according to the protocol on which it was built.

Well i guess el Salvador is a member of CFATF so technically iFinex/tether would need to comply if el Salvador officials would ask to freeze accounts.
But as corruption in el Salvador is very high and so is their lack of technical knowhow, i really doubt their capacity to track down people who haven't reported their usdt holdings if someone really wants to stay under the radar of el Salvador's government.

[Kryptowerk]

Didn't tether seize assets in relation to tornado cash? I wonder if that's considered profit or if they had to hand over that money to somewhere else.

[...]

Haha, these were my exact same sarcastic thoughts when I saw the title.

That being said, it is amazing that a stable coin that hasn't been able to get a verified audit done over the past 5 or so years is still valued in the billions and continues to make insane profits along the way.
Crazy shady bussiness as always.

[Hispo]

When I first visited Tether webpage looking for information about the token some years ago, I encounter some interesting features on the services this company has. They actually can deposit FIAT to your bank account in the United States, in exchange for tokens and last time I checked they charged 100 USDT per registration, I thought (considering the popularity of Tether) that fee was their source of revenue, but after reconsidering, these profits are too big to come from it.

This leads me to believe the theory of the token confiscation as source of revenue could be possible, keeping in mind they do not offer further details on the origin of those earnings. They may have anticipated the public outrage if they openly admitted that strategy to the crypto community. I am sure most of the people who use Tether are not even aware of the control Tether has over the tokens in all wallets.

[Lucius]

Ok now you lost me. What does President of el salvador or their crypto mining operations have anything to do with tether making profit? How are these things related?

I doubt that the OP was going in that direction, but the guys from Tether played a key role in El Salvador legalizing BTC as legal tender, because Bukele had some other ideas before that, and if he had decided to implement them, no one would be talking today about that country. It's not a very popular story on the forum because it doesn't fit the general agenda, but if you want to know more -> El Salvador Bitcoin: Tether buys itself a country; and why Chivo sucks

But about taxation, i really doubt that I seriously doubt that el salvador has similar power to track down crypto users and tax them. Especially when citizens aren't using their own fiat money but are dependable of USD and BTC.

According to what could have been read before, Bitcoin is not something that is taxed in El Salvador in any sense, and if that were to change in any case, then it would be very easy to apply taxes because everything goes through the Chivo wallet, which is a centralized wallet controlled by the government. For your information, USD has been the official currency in El Salvador for more than 20 years.

[Xal0lex]

Am I the only thinking along these lines? How do we envision the future?

They got rid of the USDT collateral in corporate securities, but the bulk of it is still not in fiat, but in treasury bills. That is, there is still no fiat for all comers, and if there is a massive outflow of money from USDT, we will still see de-peg, as we did in May 2022 when LUNA collapsed. All in all, I think the underlying problems after they eliminated corporate securities haven't gone anywhere.