- Tether has said it has signed a Big Four accounting firm to audit its reserves.
- The stablecoin giant did not reveal which firm.
- Tether has for years struggled to get an audit from one of the big accounting firms.
Stablecoin giant Tether has announced it has signed a Big Four accounting firm to audit its reserves after years of struggling to get one to do so.
The San Salvador-based company said Tuesday that the audit would be the “biggest ever inaugural audit in the history of financial markets.”
“At a scale rarely seen outside the world’s largest sovereign institutions and encompassing a uniquely complex mix of digital assets, traditional reserves, and tokenised liabilities, this audit marks a defining moment not only for Tether, but for the evolution of modern finance itself,” the company said in a statement.
The news comes as Tether is making overtures to push into the US market. In January, Tether launched USAT, a stablecoin available to US customers.
USDT, the main stablecoin issued by Tether, may command a $184 billion market cap globally, but it hasn’t been available to US customers for years.
The announcement also comes as stablecoins are becoming more mainstream. Major companies and banks are looking into issuing the tokens after US President Donald Trump signed the Genius Act into law last summer.
Tether did not say which firm would audit its reserves, nor did it immediately respond to questions from DL News.
The Big Four accounting firms are PwC, EY, Deloitte and KPMG. None of them immediately responded to questions from DL News.
What gives?
Tether is a massive company.
Tether alone makes up over half of the total stablecoin market, according to DefiLlama.
As of December, it holds $122 billion in US Treasury bills, putting it ahead of countries like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia And Israel.
Yet, despite it being one of the most profitable companies in the world, it has been criticised for years about not being transparent enough about what backs its USDT token.
In 2021, for example, Tether agreed to no longer do business in New York after a two-year state attorney general investigation found the firm had “made false statements about the backing” of USDT.
The company did not publish reports on its reserves from 2014 to 2017. In 2022, it started to publish quarterly attestations, a less thorough review of a company’s financial statements.
Tether said USDT was backed by US treasuries and other assets, and had its reserves attested by other accounting firms.
The company’s CEO, Paolo Ardoino, told DL News in a 2024 interview that the Big Four firms were afraid to work with the crypto giant because they feared it would damage their reputations.
In a Tuesday statement, Ardoino said: “For the hundreds of millions of people and businesses who rely on USDT every day, this audit is not just a compliance exercise; it is about accountability, resilience, and confidence in the infrastructure they depend on.”
Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.