Tether holds roughly 116 metric tons of gold, worth around $12.9 billion at October 2026 prices, and this is one of the few concrete numbers known about how the world’s largest stablecoin keeps its reserves. The figure surfaced through court filings and auditor commentary, not a formal attestation. Everything else about the metal is loose: where it sits, in what form, and who can inspect it.
That opacity matters more than it used to. Tether issued $172 billion of USDT outstanding by late September 2026, up from $157 billion in July, making it the largest dollar-pegged token in circulation. Each new token is supposed to be backed by high-quality liquid assets. Gold, Bitcoin, and secured loans make up the part of the balance sheet that never gets the full treatment reserved for Treasury bills.
What is actually known
Tether first disclosed a gold position in 2021 in an attestment from BDO Italia. At that point the metal was valued at $3.06 billion. The stack has grown roughly fourfold since, splitting between direct bullion and exposure through gold-linked instruments such as the XAUg token on Tether’s own platform.
| Date | Disclosed gold value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| June 30, 2021 | $3.06 billion | BDO attestation |
| March 31, 2024 | $3.55 billion | quarterly attestation |
| June 30, 2024 | $3.79 billion | quarterly attestation |
| September 30, 2024 | $3.8 billion | quarterly attestation, later revised |
| 2026 (est.) | $12.9 billion | court filings and CFO interview |
A 2026 court filing, brought to light by CoinDesk’s review, puts the total closer to 116 tons. Tether CFO Paolo Ardoino confirmed during a recent interview that the company keeps gold across several jurisdictions, though he declined to name them. The firm says the metal is held both in physical vaults and through allocation instruments that give exposure to gold held by third parties.
The custody question ends in a shrug
Tracking where the gold lives is harder than counting it. Most of Tether’s gold-linked exposure runs through partners such as Swiss vaulting firms and physical commodity traders. Ardoino told reporters that Tether has custodial relationships in Switzerland and elsewhere, but the company has not published a detailed custody map.
That gap became clearer in 2025 when the Wall Street Journal reported that Tether’s auditors had flagged gold holdings as difficult to verify independently. The report noted that the accounting firm handling the attestations, BDO Italia, declined to speak about the gold positions in detail because of confidentiality rules and the fact that Tether’s engagement covers only a narrow slice of the balance sheet.
Tether’s own filings acknowledge the gold holdings sit outside the scope of the full-accounting audits that cover the bulk of its reserves.
An earlier Big Four engagement, from KPMG, ended years ago when the firm declined to continue with the audit scope Tether wanted. That left the stablecoin issuer with a patchwork system: quarterly attestations from BDO Italia covering a snapshot of reserves, and no full audit of the kind a regulated bank or fund would normally publish.
Why the metal matters more than it looks
Gold entered Tether’s balance sheet deliberately, as part of a broader strategy to diversify away from US Treasury bills. Tether bought 3.6 million troy ounces of gold between 2021 and 2024, according to a Reuters special report, making it one of the larger buyers in the physical market during that window. The purchases were sized to let Tether claim exposure to a hard asset category that most fiat-backed stablecoins ignore.
The logic holds together on the risk side. Gold has no counterparty risk, so a claim on bullion is simpler to value than a corporate bond or a secured loan. Gold also moved through most of 2025 and 2026 without the drawdowns that hit crypto collateral, which means the value of Tether’s metal pile has held up while other parts of the balance sheet have been more volatile.
The numbers behind the $172 billion
USDT’s reserve mix, according to Tether’s most recent quarterly attestation, breaks down this way. US Treasury bills make up the bulk of the pile, followed by gold, then Bitcoin, then secured lending, then a smaller slice of corporate debt and other investments. The overall reserve pool, at $181 billion, is slightly larger than the $172 billion of tokens outstanding, a cushion Tether calls equity rather than reserves.
| Asset class | Approximate share | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| US Treasury bills | ~70% | days to a few months of maturity |
| Gold and gold-linked instruments | ~7% | largest non-Treasury allocation after Treasuries |
| Bitcoin | ~5% | subject to volatility |
| Secured loans | ~8% | mostly short-term, overcollateralized |
| Corporate debt, other investments | ~10% | includes equity stakes in fintech and commodity firms |
Reading the table is easy. Trusting it is harder. Tether has never produced an audited balance sheet, and the quarterly attestations cover only a snapshot of asset values on a single date. None of the firms that examined the gold positions have accepted liability for the custodial chain behind them.
What regulation means for the opaque slice
Tether’s regulatory setup has changed though the disclosure gap has not. The company moved its parent structure to El Salvador in 2025, obtaining a stablecoin issuer license from the Central Reserve Bank there under the country’s new digital asset law. US legislators passed the GENIUS Act in 2025, requiring full reserve backing for tokens offered to US users, though it applies to issuers operating domestically rather than to Tether directly.
Europe moved faster. Tether delisted its European tokens in early 2025 to comply with the EU’s MiCA rules, which require full reserve segregation and higher-quality collateral. USDT, issued by a separate El Salvador entity, is not recognized under those rules. The gold stockpile now sits in a legal context where the token is legal money-like infrastructure in El Salvador, restricted in the EU, and tolerated in the US pending the GENIUS Act’s implementation windows.
Ardoino has argued that Tether’s diversification is exactly what regulation should encourage, noting that the company’s gold and Bitcoin holdings give it resilience should Treasury yields move in ways that hurt traditional reserve assets. Critics counter that resilience and transparency are different things, and that a company holding $12.9 billion of gold should be able to name a vault.
| Regime | Status of USDT | Reserve requirements |
|---|---|---|
| El Salvador | Licensed issuer | Attestations required, no full audit yet |
| European Union | Not authorized under MiCA | Full segregation and high-quality collateral required |
| United States | Offshore, pending GENIUS Act rules | Full backing required for domestic issuers |
The audit gap in context
Tether is not the only stablecoin issuer with a complicated reserve story. Circle’s USDC publishes a full set of audited financials, but Circle’s reserve mix is nearly all Treasury bills and repo, with no gold, no Bitcoin, and no corporate equity. Ondo’s USDY and the smaller fiat-backed tokens trade transparency for yield in different ways. What makes Tether unusual is the combination of scale and disclosure.
The gold pile is the cleanest illustration. Tether does not dispute the tonnage. It does not publish a vault list. It does not name an independent custodian who will confirm the quantity in writing. Those three absences matter because gold, unlike a Treasury bill with a CUSIP, can exist in many forms at many purities in many places.
Tether publishes quarterly attestations and has said it will pursue a fuller audit once its El Salvador structure stabilizes. That promise has been outstanding since 2021. In the meantime the company adds tokens, adds gold, and adds jurisdictional complexity, averaging more than $500 billion in quarterly US Treasury purchases during 2025 and putting itself near the top of the list of foreign holders of US government debt.
What to watch next
Three things could pull back the curtain. A full audit, which Tether has promised for years and never delivered. A regulatory action in a major market that forces disclosure of gold custody, something the GENIUS Act implementation could do if USDT ever seeks direct US access. And a gold price reversal, which would test whether the reserve cushion holds up without the metal’s recent rally doing the heavy lifting.
None of these are likely in the next quarter. All three are plausible within a year. The gold stack will keep growing in the meantime, one quiet purchase at a time, with details left for the courts and determined journalists to piece together.