Tether finally gets a full audit by KPMG

[nelson4lov]

Why do people often think that Tether was insolvent? Across all tether fud including the times where it depegged, I didn't flinch because Tether has been the most profitable crypto company for years, even more than Binance. In 2025 alone, they made over $10B in profit and nothing goes to USDT holders/users. Absolutely nothing.

Imo, Tether only commited to the audit so people will continue to trust USDT all the way to $500B/$1T supply. At that point, their revenue will be around $30 to $50B annually and 100% of those profits are owned internally, not shared with their partners or users lol

[Darker45]

I was quite curious about the cost of an audit like that
I don't know if you guys are too
However, that information is confidential

The best I could do was find an estimate by searching online on AIs:
From $15 million to $35 million 

I had no idea it would be that high

Obviously, I don't have any sources

I presumed it must be that expensive.

If we compare Tether's audit with the other top 5 stablecoin issuer, Circle, the estimate is fair and reasonable. Circle had paid $4 million to $6.5 million to Deloitte & Touche LLP for their annual audit.

Considering that Tether has more than double the assets of Circle, and both Deloitte and KPMG belong to the Big Four, $15 million to $35 million must be more or less accurate.

Not to mention that KPMG's audit must be a lot more tedious. Deloitte auditors didn't have to perform vault audits on USDC or Circle, for example. Whereas, the KPMG auditors even had to fly to Switzerland to manually count more than 146 metric tons of gold bar by bar.

[shinratensei_]

It is actually crazy to read this now, it is 2026 and makes a headline that Tether gets audited... Isn't it weird that it took so long for such a critical component of the crypto industry to finally get audited? This should have happened long, long ago. Yet it worked and did not collapse or went rogue. People just blindly trusted it.

Even then the KPMG don't publish full audit report and financial statements which means we can't verify but to trust KPMG. We live in crypto community and "don't trust, but verify" is a thing.

Since Tether seems to be committed on becoming more transparent, it would be greatly appreciated if they could also release full statement and even better if they could improve their quarterly attestation to monthly just like their biggest competitor USDC to improve trust and public opinion.

[viljy]

Why do people often think that Tether was insolvent? Across all tether fud including the times where it depegged, I didn't flinch because Tether has been the most profitable crypto company for years, even more than Binance. In 2025 alone, they made over $10B in profit and nothing goes to USDT holders/users. Absolutely nothing.

Imo, Tether only commited to the audit so people will continue to trust USDT all the way to $500B/$1T supply. At that point, their revenue will be around $30 to $50B annually and 100% of those profits are owned internally, not shared with their partners or users lol

It seems that Tether’s main source of profit comes from investing in treasuries. That is, Tether buys treasuries with the dollars of its customers (USDT users). It turns out that all users are essentially lending their dollars to Tether at 0%. Is this completely legal? Are there any signs of unjust enrichment here (of course, if such a concept exists in US law)?

[Dogedegen]

Why do people often think that Tether was insolvent? Across all tether fud including the times where it depegged, I didn't flinch because Tether has been the most profitable crypto company for years, even more than Binance. In 2025 alone, they made over $10B in profit and nothing goes to USDT holders/users. Absolutely nothing.

Imo, Tether only commited to the audit so people will continue to trust USDT all the way to $500B/$1T supply. At that point, their revenue will be around $30 to $50B annually and 100% of those profits are owned internally, not shared with their partners or users lol

A combination of factors, there has been a lot of FUD for many reasons over time. Some people just want to hurt crypto and actively spread smart looking FUD and actually many people fall for it, look what happened recently with the Bitcoin Knots FUD! Other people open short positions and then try to do everything possible to manipulate many people with their ideas. And maybe the last big group would be people who don't know better and get panic from many things that happen in our space. There was never any real proof that Tether was dangerously insolvent, everything was big speculation based on events that could have many explanations. Some people are also in disbelief of the great business that Tether has managed to build, its cost of doing business is very low and they built a huge company with a lot of assets. Unless they do something very stupid, I don't think Tether is going anywhere and will continue to be very profitable.

Even then the KPMG don't publish full audit report and financial statements which means we can't verify but to trust KPMG. We live in crypto community and "don't trust, but verify" is a thing.

Since Tether seems to be committed on becoming more transparent, it would be greatly appreciated if they could also release full statement and even better if they could improve their quarterly attestation to monthly just like their biggest competitor USDC to improve trust and public opinion.

KPMG does not release full audit reports usually, so the verify thing is not important here. Tether could decide to ask for it to be published to the public, but I would not recommend that. A private company that continues to listen to calls from the public usually ends up in more problems than it was worth it. The audit is complete and the results are positive, people should be happy and grateful. USDC is a small competitor compared to USDT.

[Kryptowerk]

It is not unheard of that companies get though the audit without issues and collapse shortly after.
Wirecard is the prime example.

https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/breaking-news/report-exposes-corporate-collapses-comebacks-and-survivors-533775.aspx

That's exactly what I wanted to point out.
An audit != and audit. It plays a big role who's auditing who and which incentives might be involved to greenwash some potential red flags.

I'm still quite wary towards USDT and generally any stable coin - holding large sums of money in these seems an unnecessary risk.

One more positive audit is good, but imho it does not reduce the risk to 0.