Tether said Thursday that KPMG U.S. completed an audit of Tether International, S.A. de C.V.'s financial statements for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025 — the first full audit in the company's 11-year history. The result was an unqualified opinion, the strongest verdict an external auditor can deliver, meaning KPMG found no material exceptions and no reservations about the financials.
The audit covered a complete set of financial statements: the full balance sheet, including every asset in the reserve pile and every liability represented by outstanding USDT, plus the income statement, changes in equity and cash flows. Each section was subject to independent substantive testing rather than a review or attestation — the lighter-touch process Tether had previously used via BDO.
The reserve cushion KPMG verified came in at $6.81 billion above total liabilities, a figure Tether described as the surplus backing its outstanding USDT supply as of year-end 2025. That excess-reserves number has appeared in Tether's quarterly attestations before, but this marks the first time a Big Four firm independently tested and confirmed it through a full audit rather than a management-prepared snapshot.
KPMG's scope went beyond paper trails. Auditors physically counted and inspected every individual gold bar held by Tether, verifying each bar's existence and identifying information rather than accepting custodian or counterparty reports at face value. Physical inspection of that kind is unusual for a financial audit and reflects the difficulty of verifying non-standard reserve assets like allocated gold.
Despite the clean opinion, Tether did not release the actual audit report. The company confirmed KPMG issued the opinion but did not post the underlying financial statements or the full audit document in any public filing. That gap matters on-chain: USDT is the dominant stablecoin by supply and the primary unit of account across most DEX pairs, lending markets and perpetual venues. Holders and protocol treasuries relying on USDT have the auditor's conclusion but not the supporting evidence.
Tether's history with audits explains why Thursday's announcement carries weight even in incomplete form. The company spent years acknowledging it could not retain a major accounting firm, citing reputational concerns among top-tier firms and the absence of standardized crypto-sector accounting rules. BDO carried out quarterly attestations — point-in-time snapshots of reserve balances that confirmed assets existed but did not constitute a full audit of the issuer's books. A full audit with an income statement and cash flow analysis exposes far more of the business than a reserve attestation does.
Tether is incorporated in El Salvador, having relocated there in recent years. The entity audited — Tether International, S.A. de C.V. — reflects that structure. KPMG U.S. serving as auditor for a Salvadoran holding company is notable; it means the opinion was issued under U.S. auditing standards, which carry more weight with institutional counterparties than standards from smaller jurisdictions.
The GENIUS Act, signed in 2025, established the federal framework for payment stablecoin issuers operating in the United States. That law sets reserve and audit requirements for regulated issuers. Tether does not currently operate as a regulated U.S. payment stablecoin issuer under that framework, but the audit brings its disclosure practices closer to what compliant issuers are expected to produce. Whether that proximity opens doors to U.S. distribution partnerships or exchange listings is not addressed in Tether's announcement.
For protocols carrying USDT in their liquidity pools or as collateral, the audit shifts the due-diligence baseline. Lending markets like Aave and Compound list USDT with loan-to-value parameters set partly on counterparty risk. An unqualified opinion from a Big Four firm is a harder data point than a BDO attestation, even if the underlying report stays private. DAOs that have debated USDT risk parameters now have at least one more concrete data point to reference in governance votes.
KPMG's opinion exists; Tether confirmed it. But the financial statements that support that opinion have not been released. A clean audit conclusion without the supporting document is structurally incomplete — credible, but not fully verifiable by an outside party. Tether has not given a timeline for releasing the full report.
