Brief Highlights

• Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that the company holds approximately 150,000 bitcoins, valued at around $11.5 billion.
• This number is approximately 50,000 more than the quantity shown in Tether's third-quarter reserve certificate.
• Ardoino does not specify where these additional bitcoins are stored or when they were purchased, while Tether indicates that the bitcoins held by its company are separate from the reserves of USDT.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that this stablecoin giant currently holds approximately 150,000 bitcoins, which are valued at around $11.5 billion at current prices. This number is about 50,000 more than the amount disclosed by the company itself in its reserve information.

"We ourselves hold approximately 150,000 bitcoins. It's not a large amount, but this is honest work," said Ardoino during a keynote speech at the Plan ₿ Forum held in Lugano, Switzerland. Since 2022, Tether has been promoting Bitcoin and stablecoin adoption projects in this city.

The reason this statement has drawn attention is that it does not completely match the public documents. The reserve certificate for the third quarter of Tether covers the assets that support its USDT stablecoin. It lists Bitcoin assets amounting to 8.37 billion US dollars, valued at $83,621 per coin, which means there are approximately 100,060 BTC coins.

This means that there are still approximately 50,000 bitcoins, valued at nearly $3.8 billion, that have not yet been reflected in their public documents. Ardoino did not specify where these additional bitcoins are stored or when they were purchased, so his comments do not imply that the company has just made a new purchase of the same scale; Tether has long stated that the bitcoin investments held by the company are separate from the reserves that support USDT.

The issuer of this stablecoin has been accumulating Bitcoin over the years. In May 2023, Tether stated that it would invest up to 15% of its net realized operating profits in Bitcoin and would manage these Bitcoins itself, rather than relying on third-party custodian institutions.

This strategy has benefited from astonishing profits: the company recorded a net operating profit of $1.5 billion in just the third quarter, and with the continuous growth in USDT supply, it has achieved profits in the billions of dollars each quarter since the beginning of this year.

The third-quarter report shows that the broader reserve situation is as follows: assets amount to $191.45 billion, liabilities are $183.5 billion, leaving an excess buffer of $7.95 billion, which is nearly twice the $4.11 billion buffer reported in June. U.S. Treasury bills still constitute the main portion of the reserves, with a scale of about $132.4 billion.

Transparency has always been a sensitive topic for Tether. For many years, there have been doubts from the outside world as to whether USDT has received sufficient support. This year, the company has begun to allow KPMG to conduct its first comprehensive financial audit, which is a long-awaited step towards addressing these concerns.

Ardoino also emphasized the scale of Tether on the stage in Lugano, stating that the company now has over 730 million users worldwide, adds about 30 million new wallets each quarter, and uses its profits to support a range of open-source technologies.

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