Tether has hired KPMG to conduct its first comprehensive audit of USDT‘s financial statements, with PwC brought in to help prepare the company’s internal systems, according to people familiar with the matter cited by the Financial Times. The development follows a Tuesday announcement from Tether confirming it had formally engaged a Big Four accounting firm for an inaugural financial statement audit, though it did not name the firm at the time. The move ends years of pledges by Tether to deliver a full review of its books, during which the company relied instead on periodic reserve attestations from BDO Italia, the Italian arm of the BDO global accounting network, which has produced USDT assurance reports since 2022.
USDT is a dollar-linked stablecoin with approximately $185 billion in circulation, making it the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, according to CoinGecko. Tether disclosed in January that it held more than $122 billion in direct US Treasury securities and around $141 billion in total Treasury exposure, including instruments such as overnight reverse repurchase agreements. The scale of the company’s balance sheet has made the absence of a full audit a long-standing point of scrutiny among regulators and market observers.
The KPMG audit is expected to go well beyond reserve snapshots, covering Tether’s assets, liabilities, and internal controls across its entire balance sheet. Tether has described the undertaking as “the biggest ever inaugural audit in the history of financial markets.” The company said KPMG was selected through a competitive process and that Tether already operates at Big Four audit standards, though it has not publicly committed to a completion date for the review.
The audit push coincides with Tether’s broader ambitions to raise fresh equity and expand into the United States under the new federal stablecoin framework established by the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. Bloomberg reported in September 2025 that Tether was exploring raising as much as $20 billion in equity, which would imply a valuation of $500 billion. Tether CEO Paulo Ardoino disputed the specific figure in February, telling Cointelegraph that no such amount had been agreed upon, while affirming the company’s $500 billion valuation target based on its profits.
Tether’s regulatory history adds further context to the significance of a full audit. The company previously paid a $41 million fine to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over what the regulator described as untrue or misleading statements about its reserves. In a separate matter, Tether reached an $18.5 million settlement with the New York Attorney General over allegations that it concealed losses and misled investors about USDT’s backing. As part of that settlement, Tether was required to provide detailed quarterly reserve reports for two years and later withdrew its opposition to the public release of those materials.
Cointelegraph contacted both Tether and KPMG for comment but had not received responses by the time of publication. PwC declined to comment on its involvement. The audit, if completed, would represent a significant step toward greater financial transparency for one of the most widely used instruments in the digital asset market.
Originally reported by CoinTelegraph.
