Paolo Ardoino dismissed the wave of criticism that followed Tether's first formal audit by KPMG, telling listeners on The Block's Starting Block podcast: "Honestly, I don't care." The Tether CEO added: "We have already proved ourselves many times. It is actually good to be criticized. It makes us better and stronger."
KPMG's U.S. arm issued an unqualified opinion on Tether International's 2025 financial statements — the cleanest possible audit result, meaning the auditor had no reservations about the financials. Ardoino called it "the best possible audit opinion an independent auditor can issue." The announcement, made Aug. 13, marked the first time Tether has submitted to a full financial audit by a Big Four firm in the stablecoin issuer's history.
Critics raised two objections immediately. First, the audit covers only Tether International, the specific subsidiary that issues USDT, rather than the consolidated Tether group of companies. Ardoino addressed that directly: Tether International is the only entity that issues USDT, he said, making the subsidiary the relevant scope for any opinion on the stablecoin's backing. Second, Tether has not released the full audit report to the public. A source with direct knowledge of the decision said Tether withheld the document because it is a private company, and that many privately held companies take the same approach.
A $6.8 billion surplus figure surfaced in corroborating coverage — referring to the excess of Tether's reserves above its USDT liabilities as reported in the audited statements. Tether has previously disclosed reserve figures through quarterly attestations, but those attestations are narrower exercises: an auditor confirms the numbers management provides, without the deeper verification of a full audit. KPMG's engagement went further, testing the underlying financial statements as a whole.
Ardoino used Tether's 2022 stress test as the central counterargument to skeptics. When crypto markets collapsed that year following the Terra/LUNA implosion and the cascade of centralized-lending failures, Tether processed $7 billion in redemptions within 48 hours — roughly 10 percent of its total reserves at the time — without suspending withdrawals or gating access. Ardoino said most traditional financial institutions would struggle to absorb that scale of outflows in that timeframe.
That 2022 episode matters as context. Tether's critics had long argued, before and during that period, that a stress event would expose mismatches between USDT liabilities and actual liquid reserves. Tether honored $7 billion in 48 hours without breaking the peg — Ardoino's primary rebuttal to what he characterized as critics who "cannot admit they were wrong."
The audit scope question is the more substantive open issue. Tether operates through multiple entities, and the KPMG opinion applies only to Tether International. Critics who flagged this argued the broader group structure — which includes investments, lending desks and other businesses — remains unaudited at the consolidated level. Ardoino's response is clean on the USDT question specifically: if Tether International is the sole issuer of USDT and holds the reserves backing those tokens, the subsidiary-level audit captures what matters for holders of the stablecoin.
The privacy argument for withholding the full report is standard corporate practice for unlisted companies. Publicly traded firms must file audited financials with regulators; private firms generally do not. What is unusual is that Tether's liabilities — USDT tokens — circulate as public financial instruments held by millions of users across every major DeFi protocol and centralized exchange, creating a tension between private-company disclosure norms and the public nature of the stablecoin itself.
That tension sits at the center of the GENIUS Act, the U.S. federal stablecoin law signed in 2025, which sets reserve and audit requirements for payment stablecoin issuers. Whether and how Tether International falls under that framework — given its non-U.S. domicile — is an open regulatory question the KPMG announcement does not resolve.
Tether's USDT remains the largest stablecoin by supply and the primary unit of account across spot and derivatives markets globally. It anchors liquidity in most major AMM pools, serves as the dominant margin currency on offshore perpetuals venues, and accounts for the bulk of stablecoin volume on every major DEX. An unqualified KPMG opinion on the issuing entity is the most credible third-party verification Tether has produced. The audit's scope limitations and the withheld report are real criticisms — Ardoino chose not to paper over them, and declined to care.
