Tether says KPMG completed its first full audit, sharpening stablecoin scrutiny

Tether said on Thursday, August 13, 2026, that KPMG U.S. completed a full financial audit of Tether International for the year ended December 31, 2025. The company behind USDT said the audit resulted in an unqualified opinion, which matters because USDT is still one of the core settlement assets used across crypto trading, treasury, and payments workflows.

The practical significance is not that an audit changes how stablecoins work overnight. It is that a larger, more formal review can reduce uncertainty for finance teams that hold stablecoins for operating liquidity, conversion, or payout funding. For operators, the question is usually less about ideology and more about whether a balance can be moved, reconciled, and settled with enough confidence to support day-to-day payment operations.

Why this matters for stablecoin treasury teams

Tether said the statements showed reserves exceeded liabilities by $6.814 billion at the end of 2025. That is the kind of headline treasury teams watch because reserve disclosures, audit scope, and reporting cadence all shape how much operational comfort they assign to a stablecoin balance. Even when a token is widely used, finance teams still need to decide whether it should sit as a working balance, a settlement bridge, or a temporary asset before conversion into fiat.

For businesses using stablecoins to move value across borders, the main operational question is whether their internal controls keep pace with the asset. That includes treasury policy, wallet permissions, counterparty checks, and documented conversion and payout paths. Radom’s stablecoin settlement page is relevant here because it frames stablecoins as payment infrastructure rather than an investment product.

What operators should watch next

The next watchpoint is whether this audit becomes a recurring disclosure standard or remains a one-off milestone. Tether has long relied on quarterly attestations, and the difference between an attestation and a full audit matters to risk teams. An audit is broader, but it does not remove the need to monitor liquidity, counterparty exposure, and the exact corridors used for conversion and settlement.

Teams that use USDT in payment flows should also watch how counterparties respond. Some platforms will treat the audit as a confidence signal. Others will still apply their own rules around accepted assets, settlement timing, and redemption or conversion procedures. In practice, the operational response is the same: document asset policy, keep reconciliation tight, and avoid assuming one external report solves every treasury control issue.

Limits, caveats, and failure modes

The main limitation is that a financial audit does not eliminate market, custody, or rail risk. Tether said KPMG examined transactions, systems, valuations, counterparties, and ownership records, and that auditors physically counted and inspected gold bars. That is useful context, but finance teams still need to manage the parts the audit does not cover, such as internal approval flows, wallet segregation, and how quickly balances can be converted when payment obligations come due.

The practical response is to treat the audit as one input into policy, not a substitute for it. Treasury and compliance owners should review exposure limits, settlement counterparties, and conversion controls, then test whether the business can still operate if a preferred asset, corridor, or liquidity source becomes less available.

For businesses that move stablecoins between collection, settlement, and payout legs, the broader lesson is simple: the asset may be familiar, but the operating model still needs governance. That is where tools for conversion, reconciliation, and payout routing matter more than the market headline itself.