Tether has hired KPMG to conduct a full financial audit of its $185B in USDT reserves — the Financial Times reported, citing sources. This marks the first full-scale audit in the company's history since its founding: until now, Tether had been running on monthly attestations from BDO Italia.
Tether announced the engagement of a Big Four auditor on March 24, but did not disclose the firm's name at the time.
In parallel, Tether brought in PwC to address data quality gaps and strengthen its control infrastructure ahead of the actual audit.
"Given the scale of the balance sheet — which spans U.S. Treasuries, gold, Bitcoin, and tokenized obligations across multiple blockchains — this is the largest debut audit in the history of financial markets," said Simon McWilliams, CFO of KPMG.
Reputational Context
In 2021, the CFTC fined Tether $41M for misrepresenting its dollar reserves. Documents disclosed by the New York Attorney General confirmed the storage of $40.6B in assets at Bahamas-based Deltec Bank and Chinese bank securities.
The stablecoin issuer has since overhauled the structure of its reserves, but questions from the crypto community around financial transparency haven't gone away.
The audit coincides with two practical goals: entering the U.S. market — Tether has already launched a GENIUS Act-compliant token, USAT, with a market cap of $28M — and plans to raise between $15B and $20B at a $500B valuation. As the FT notes, investors remain cautious due to concerns over pricing and regulatory risk.
Worth noting: last year, Tether poached a digital assets specialist from KPMG's Canadian office to serve as its head of internal audit.