Tether says KPMG issued clean opinion on its 2025 financial statements
Tether says KPMG U.S. completed its first full audit, but the underlying report and financial statements have not been published.
By Dev Ramirez · Crypto Correspondent
· 3 min read
Tether KPMG 2025 audit is the latest transparency milestone claimed by the issuer of USDT. Tether said August 13 that KPMG U.S. completed a full audit of its 2025 financial statements and issued an unqualified opinion, while investors still cannot review the audit report or the statements behind the announcement.
The audit covered Tether International, S.A. de C.V. for the year ended December 31, 2025. Tether said its audited accounts showed reserves exceeded liabilities by $6.814 billion at that date. The company called the engagement the “largest inaugural financial audit in history,” a superlative not independently established by the materials available.
For USDT users, the distinction is important: this concerns a named Tether entity and a past reporting period. It does not establish the company’s current reserve position or answer how its reserves would perform during heavy redemptions.
What did KPMG’s opinion on Tether’s 2025 audit cover?
According to Tether’s announcement, an unqualified opinion means KPMG concluded that the financial statements fairly presented, in all material respects, the company’s financial position as of December 31, 2025, plus its operations and cash flows for the year, under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.
An unqualified opinion is an auditor’s opinion without reservations, exceptions or caveats. It is commonly described as a clean audit opinion. That finding is broader than a check of reserves on one date, but it remains tied to the financial statements and period that were audited.
Tether said KPMG examined transactions, systems, ownership records, valuations, counterparties and supporting evidence. It also said the audit covered the balance sheet, income statement, statement of changes in equity and cash-flow statement. The company further said KPMG physically counted and inspected every gold bar it held rather than relying only on custodian or counterparty records.
How is a full audit different from Tether’s earlier attestations?
Tether said it had previously released recurring independent attestations covering assets backing issued tokens. An attestation is generally a point-in-time review of specified information. A full financial-statement audit covers a company’s reporting for an entire year and examines the evidence supporting those statements.
That makes the reported KPMG engagement a more expansive review than the earlier reserve reports. Still, the available material does not include KPMG’s opinion, the audited financial statements or their notes. BeInCrypto reported that Tether had not published those documents, limiting outside analysis of its accounting policies, reserve composition and related-party disclosures.
BeInCrypto also reported that Tether’s June 30, 2026 quarterly report listed $4.11 billion in excess reserves, below the $6.814 billion reported for December 2025. The figures are not a strict comparison: the outlet said the entity covered by the audit and the group in the later attestation were not identical.
The opinion itself does not settle questions of present-day liquidity, redemption capacity during market stress or counterparty exposure, according to BeInCrypto. Those remain separate questions from whether the 2025 financial statements of the audited entity were fairly presented.
This story draws on original reporting from Decrypt.
