Tether Holds 150,000 Bitcoin, CEO Says—50,000 More Than Filings Show

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the stablecoin issuer holds approximately 150,000 Bitcoin, worth roughly $11.5 billion at current market prices — a figure that exceeds by some 50,000 coins what the company's own third-quarter reserve attestation implies.

"We have give or take 150,000 bitcoin ourselves. It's not much, but it's honest work," Ardoino said during a keynote at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano, Switzerland, the city where Tether has run a Bitcoin and stablecoin adoption program since 2022.

The claim does not square neatly with the paper trail. Tether's Q3 reserve attestation, which covers the assets backing USDT, lists $8.37 billion of Bitcoin valued at $83,621 per coin — implying a holding of roughly 100,060 BTC. That leaves about 50,000 coins, worth close to $3.8 billion, unaccounted for in public filings. Ardoino did not say where the additional Bitcoin is held or when it was acquired, so the remark does not indicate a fresh purchase of that size. Tether has long maintained that its corporate Bitcoin investments sit separately from the reserves supporting USDT.

What does the gap change for practitioners?

For auditors, counterparties and regulators, the discrepancy frames a concrete question about disclosure scope. The quarterly attestations describe USDT-backing assets, not Tether's corporate treasury, which means the roughly $3.8 billion in unaccounted coins sits outside the transparency perimeter most market participants rely on. Tether began its first full financial audit with KPMG this year, a long-awaited step toward addressing doubts over whether USDT is fully backed — and a full audit, unlike an attestation, would be expected to capture the corporate balance sheet.

A treasury built on record profits

The accumulation strategy dates to May 2023, when Tether said it would channel up to 15% of net realized operating profits into Bitcoin and custody the coins itself rather than rely on third-party custodians. The program has been funded by extraordinary earnings: the company reported $1.5 billion in net operating profit in the third quarter alone and has posted billion-dollar quarterly profits throughout the year while USDT supply has kept growing.

The wider reserve picture, as laid out in the Q3 report, shows:

• $191.45 billion in total reserve assets against $183.50 billion in liabilities;
• a cushion of $7.95 billion — nearly double the $4.11 billion buffer reported in June;
• roughly $132.4 billion in U.S. Treasury bills, the bulk of reserves.

Transparency has long been a sensitive subject for Tether, which has faced years of scrutiny over USDT's backing. The attestation surplus, nearly doubled in a single quarter, is the strongest public evidence yet of over-collateralization — but it covers only the reserve side of the house.

Ardoino also used the Lugano stage to tout scale, saying Tether now serves more than 730 million users worldwide and adds roughly 30 million wallets per quarter, as he pitched a suite of open-source technologies funded by company profits. That growth rate implies a user base expanding by more than 100 million annually.

The KPMG audit now carries the practical weight: until it lands, roughly a third of Tether's stated Bitcoin position exists only as an executive's keynote remark, and the market will have to wait for the filing to learn where those coins sit.