Tether says its exposure to EQIBank amounts to less than 0.034% of group assets, responding to a report that some of the stablecoin issuer's funds are stuck at the offshore bank, which faces liquidation risk after a U.S. asset seizure. A Tether spokesperson gave the percentage to CoinDesk without disclosing a dollar figure. Applied to the $187.75 billion of assets in Tether International's June 30 attestation, 0.034% equates to roughly $63.8 million.

The disclosure follows a Sept. 24 report by The Information, in which reporter Yueqi Yang described "some funds stuck" at EQIBank. The bank says it is licensed and regulated by Dominica's Financial Services Unit. For USDT holders, the operational question is access to money through a banking partner; Tether's statement does not identify the affected assets specifically as USDT reserves.

What does the court order actually show?

A Sept. 14 federal court order in the related forfeiture proceeding lists seized accounts held in Capstone Limited's name at Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, including approximately $79.1 million at Wells Fargo Securities. The order, issued in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, directs publication of notice to potential claimants. It does not decide liability, and it does not establish Tether's exposure.

Tether moved to separate itself from the underlying allegations. "Tether had no knowledge of the conduct by Capstone alleged by the Department of Justice," the spokesperson told CoinDesk.

Would stablecoin banking rules have prevented this?

Not necessarily. Both Europe's MiCA regulation and the U.S. GENIUS Act restrict where regulated stablecoin reserves can be held, but neither framework establishes that compliance would have averted this episode. That depends on whether the affected money was reserve backing and how the accounts were structured.

MiCA's Article 54 requires e-money token issuers subject to its safeguarding rules to keep at least 30% of funds received in separate accounts at credit institutions. MiCA defines those institutions by reference to EU banking authorization, so a Dominica license alone would not qualify. Articles 58 and 37 add custody safeguards: due diligence on custodians, monitoring of their financial condition, and reserve funds held in identifiable, segregated accounts in the issuer's name.

The GENIUS Act takes a different approach. Its reserve menu for permitted U.S. issuers includes withdrawable deposits at insured depository institutions and short-dated Treasuries. Section 10 restricts reserve-custody services to providers under specified federal or state supervision and generally requires customer assets to be separately accounted for and segregated from the custodian's assets. But the law expressly exempts cash held as a bank deposit liability from that segregation requirement. A deposit, in other words, is not equivalent to a segregated custody holding. Foreign issuers seeking the market-access exception face additional conditions, including comparable home-country regulation, OCC registration and sufficient reserves at a U.S. financial institution to meet U.S. customer liquidity demands.

Why Tether objects to deposit mandates

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has amplified criticism of MiCA's deposit requirements. On Sept. 22, he shared a passage reporting that European central banks wanted the deposit rule removed, adding the words: "Tether refused an EU license over the same clause." MiCA compliance concerns have already affected USDT's European availability — Coinbase delisted the token in Europe in December 2024 over those concerns.

The European System of Central Banks, in a September consultation response on the MiCA review, recommended replacing minimum bank-deposit requirements with minimum holdings of assets maturing within one and five working days, alongside safeguards against contagion between stablecoins, banks and reserve-asset markets. That remains a proposal to amend MiCA, not a repeal of its deposit rules.

The forfeiture proceeding will now run its public-notice period, and Tether's exposure should become clearer as claimants respond and the court addresses the fate of the seized Capstone-linked accounts.