What did Tether announce?
Tether International published its results for the second quarter of 2026. According to the report, which sources say was confirmed by the auditing firm BDO, the stablecoin issuer (a cryptocurrency pegged to the value of another asset, in this case the US dollar) reported a net operating profit of $1.5 billion.
Key figures according to the published results:
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Net operating profit for Q2 | $1.5B | Incrypted, CoinDesk, Decrypt, Cointelegraph |
| Reserve buffer above liabilities | $4.11B | Incrypted, Cointelegraph |
| Physical gold holdings | over 146 tonnes | Incrypted, Decrypt |
| Gold added during Q2 | approx. 14 tonnes | CoinDesk |
| Bitcoin added during Q2 | approx. 1,800 BTC | CoinDesk |
According to Decrypt, the attestation offers a snapshot of the assets backing USDT: US Treasuries, repo operations (short-term secured loans), and over 146 tonnes of gold.
What does the reserve structure look like?
According to Incrypted, Tether continues to buy US Treasuries and gold. Cointelegraph notes that it is precisely the holding of US Treasuries that drives the company's profitability. The structure therefore rests primarily on short-term US debt supplemented by repo operations, gold, and bitcoin.
This is an attestation, meaning a confirmation of the state as of a given date, not a full financial audit of the entire company. This is a distinction that has long been watched with stablecoins and is worth remembering when reading any report of this type.
Did the supply and reserve buffer rise or fall?
Here it is necessary to be precise, because the sources appear to contradict each other at first glance.
Cointelegraph writes that the reserve surplus rose to $4.11 billion and that the USDT supply grew despite a weaker stablecoin market and pressure across the sector. Decrypt likewise speaks of growth in the USDT supply.
On the other hand, CoinDesk's headline states that the reserve buffer was halved in the second quarter. Incrypted speaks of a buffer exceeding $4 billion without comparing it to the previous quarter.
This information need not be mutually exclusive: the absolute figure of $4.11 billion can at the same time be lower than in the previous period. However, a precise comparison of the buffer's quarter-over-quarter development does not clearly emerge from the available summaries, which is why we do not present it as fact.
What do we still not know?
From the available sources we do not have a detailed breakdown of the individual reserve items in exact amounts, nor the full methodology for how the buffer was calculated. We also do not have a confirmed exact year-over-year or quarter-over-quarter dynamic of the reserve buffer. These figures would be in the full report; we are working with summaries from four sources.
What to watch out for with this type of news
With the results of stablecoin issuers, it is useful to distinguish three things: the company's profit, the composition of the reserves, and the difference between an attestation and an audit. The high profit stems primarily from interest on short-term US debt, which means sensitivity to the development of interest rates. The additions of gold and bitcoin are a separate item that is best watched separately from the main dollar portion of the reserves. This is not a recommendation for any action, merely a framework for how to read reports of this kind.