Tether Releases Attestation Report Showing $960M Excess Reserves

Tether has released a report showing excess reserves and a shift of assets in Treasury bills.

The attestation report completed by public accounting firm BDO and released Thursday (Feb. 9) by Tether says the issuer of the tether (USDT) stablecoin had $67 billion in consolidated total assets, $66 billion in consolidated total liabilities and $960 million in excess reserves as of Dec. 31.

During the last quarter of 2022, Tether added $700 million net profit to its reserves, allocated 58% of its assets to U.S. Treasury bills, and ended the year with no commercial paper, according to the report.

“After a tumultuous end to 2022, Tether has once again proven its stability, its resilience and its ability to handle bear markets and black swan events, setting itself apart from the bad actors of the industry,” Tether Chief Technology Officer Paolo Ardoino said in a Thursday press release.

As PYMNTS reported Dec. 1, Tether stablecoins and the entire industry have faced renewed scrutiny in the wake of the collapse of FTX.

As an asset-backed stablecoin, tether is pegged to the U.S. dollar, meaning that each tether is supposed to be backed in value 1:1 with the dollar or the equivalent and is the category’s reliable equivalent of Treasury bonds.

While Tether’s practice has been to publish an attestation that shows a snapshot of its reserves and liabilities, signed off by an accounting firm, the company has faced questions about whether its revenues are sufficient — and The Wall Street Journal reported in August 2022 that Tether had been promising an audit since 2017.

Audits are usually more thorough, and some attestations sign off on the numbers provided for specific dates and times, without testing transactions before or after.

Tether said Thursday in the press release that, having reduced its commercial paper to zero, its reserves are liquid in the form of cash, cash equivalents and other short-term deposits.

“We are proud of how Tether has continued to be a driving force in rebuilding trust within the crypto industry and we are determined to continue to set a positive example for our peers and competitors alike,” Ardoino said in the release.