Tether Q3 2026 Attestation: Reserve Buffer Nearly Doubles to $7.95 Billion as Gold and Bitcoin Stay Above 14% of Reserves
Tether's BDO attestation shows $191.45 billion of assets against $183.50 billion of liabilities at 30 September 2026, a $7.95 billion buffer, up from $4.1 billion at the end of June; Tether also reports $1.5 billion in Q3 net operating profit.
By Elena Marsh, Journalist, Stablecoins
Tether said on 30 October that the reserves behind USDT exceeded its liabilities by $7.95 billion at the end of September, nearly double the $4.1 billion buffer it reported at the end of June. The figures come from the company's third-quarter Financial Figures and Reserves Report, a reasonable-assurance attestation by BDO Advisory Services dated 30 October 2026 and covering Tether International, S.A. de C.V. as of 30 September 2026.
Tether also reported $1.5 billion in net operating profit for the third quarter and $4.5 billion for the first nine months of 2026, with US Treasury bills and reverse repurchase agreements providing most of that income. Those profit figures are Tether's own measure; they are in the company's release, not in the attested report.
What the attestation shows
The report lists total assets of $191.45 billion against total liabilities of $183.50 billion, of which $183.47 billion relates to digital tokens issued. The difference, $7,954,630,470, is the excess-reserve buffer. Tether says USDT issuance held broadly steady at about $184 billion across the first three quarters of the year.
Reserve category (30 Sep 2026) — US$ billion — Share of reserves
US Treasury bills (under 90 days) — 122.84 — 64.2%
Overnight reverse repos — 9.52 — 5.0%
Term reverse repos — 7.18 — 3.7%
Other cash, deposits and non-US T-bills — 0.04 — <0.1%
Cash and cash equivalents subtotal — 139.58 — 72.9%
Gold (precious metals) — 19.08 — 10.0%
Secured loans — 14.18 — 7.4%
Bitcoin — 8.37 — 4.4%
Other investments — 6.00 — 3.1%
Public equities — 4.18 — 2.2%
Corporate bonds — 0.06 — <0.1%
Total — 191.45 — 100%
Source: BDO attestation of Tether International's Financial Figures and Reserves Report; shares calculated by NextCurrency.
Tether says its direct and indirect holdings of US Treasury bills total $132.4 billion, a broader measure than the $122.84 billion line in the table. The report values gold at $4,157.41 an ounce and bitcoin at $83,621.23, both Bloomberg closing prices on 30 September.
The buffer is smaller than the volatile assets
The headline buffer is a point-in-time number, and the assets most likely to move it are large relative to it. Gold, bitcoin, public equities, other investments and secured loans together come to about $51.8 billion, more than six times the $7.95 billion of excess reserves. Gold alone is worth more than twice the buffer.
That matters because Tether's last two quarters moved in opposite directions. In its second-quarter report Tether's buffer fell to about $4.1 billion, a decline NextCurrency reported at the time as driven by lower gold and bitcoin prices. The third-quarter recovery restores most of that ground, but the asset mix has not changed in kind: roughly 27% of reserves sit outside cash and cash equivalents.
The attestation's own change-in-equity table puts the buffer at $6.81 billion on 31 December 2025, records a financial result of $1.66 billion for January to September and net capital movements of minus $519 million. That financial result is far below Tether's $4.5 billion nine-month operating profit; the attested report does not reconcile the two figures, so the gap cannot be attributed from these documents alone.
What the report does not cover
BDO's opinion is limited to one date, 30 September 2026, and does not provide assurance at any other time. The report is not a set of financial statements and not an audit. It also predates the Binance hot-wallet incident in late October, in which Tether froze assets, so it says nothing about any later effect on reserves.
Sources
- Tether, Tether Generates $1.5 Billion in Q3 Net Operating Profit as Reserve Buffer Doubles to Almost $8 Billion (30 October 2026)
- BDO Advisory Services, Independent reasonable assurance report on Tether International's Financial Figures and Reserves Report as at 30 September 2026 (Milan, 30 October 2026)