What did Tether announce?
Tether, the issuer of the largest stablecoin USDT, released its quarterly statement on reserves and results. According to summaries from Incrypted and Cointelegraph, the company reported net operating profit of roughly $1.5 billion for the quarter under review. The information was announced by company CEO Paolo Ardoino.
A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to another asset, typically the US dollar at a 1:1 ratio. The issuer is supposed to hold corresponding reserves for every token issued.
Key figures from the statement, according to Incrypted:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Net operating profit | ~$1.5B |
| Excess reserves (previous) | $4.1B |
| Excess reserves (now) | $7.95B |
| Total assets | $191.45B |
| Liabilities | $183.5B |
Excess reserves are the portion of assets that exceeds liabilities to token holders, that is, a cushion beyond full backing. According to the statement, they rose to nearly double.
What backs Tether?
According to Cointelegraph, Tether's holdings of US Treasuries are comparable to those of large foreign holders. This is a point regularly emphasized, because Treasuries form the core of the reserves.
Cointelegraph further states that bitcoin reserves were worth $8.37 billion at the end of September.
The statement, according to Incrypted, was prepared with the involvement of the international audit firm BDO. Here we need to be precise with the terms: this is a so-called attestation (verification of the state at a given date), not a full ongoing audit. The scope and methodology of this particular document beyond what the sources state are not known to us.
A note on the date: which quarter is this?
The primary language source (Incrypted) describes the statement as results for the third quarter of 2026. Given that the other sources speak generally of the "third quarter" and of figures as of the end of September, we leave the designation as the source states it, and we point out that readers should verify the exact year in Tether's original statement. We cannot resolve the discrepancy in the year designation with certainty from the available sources.
How does the freezing of funds after the Binance attack relate to this?
Alongside the strong financial figures, Tether appeared in another story. According to CryptoSlate, Paolo Ardoino announced on October 29 that the company had frozen more than 1.567 billion USDT linked to a suspected security incident at the Binance exchange.
CryptoSlate reports that stablecoin issuers, specifically Tether, Circle, Ripple, and World Liberty Financial (a crypto firm associated with Donald Trump), together froze more than $2.6 billion in digital assets linked to the incident, in which nearly $6 billion was reportedly drained.
Here the sources disagree on the numbers, and it is fair to state this openly:
| Figure | CryptoSlate | Decrypt |
|---|---|---|
| Estimated scope of the outflow | ~$6B | $5.57B (on-chain total across three blockchains) |
| Total volume of frozen funds | >$2.6B (multiple issuers) | $1.8B (Tether and Circle) |
The differences stem from which issuers and which chains a given calculation includes and at what point in time it was made. Exact final figures are not settled at this moment.
What follows from this and what to watch?
Two things hold together as a story about the power of a stablecoin issuer. On one side stands financial performance built mainly on returns from reserves (Treasuries, bitcoin). On the other side stands the ability to centrally freeze these tokens, which in the Binance incident played out in the order of billions of dollars.
For this type of news, charliedesk does not give any buy or sell recommendations. What can be watched further: the final quantification of the stolen and frozen amounts, any official statement from Binance, and whether and how the frozen funds will be returned. For Tether's statement, it is then key to verify the primary document directly, including the exact year of the quarter.