Overview

USDT is the token issued by Tether that aims to hold a one-dollar peg. Its 2014 launch as "Realcoin" and later rename are covered in detail in "History of Stablecoins"; the issuing company's own profile is covered in "Tether."

Reserves and attestation

Per the Q2 2026 attestation (BDO, as of June 30, 2026), roughly $184.6 billion in USDT was in circulation against group assets of $187.75 billion and liabilities of $183.64 billion — the buffer shrank to $4.11 billion from $8.23 billion a quarter earlier. Reserves were dominated by Treasury bills (about $115 billion) and overnight reverse repo (about $18.6 billion), with gold (about $18.8 billion) and bitcoin (about $5.8 billion) as smaller positions. On August 13, 2026, Tether announced that KPMG US had issued an unqualified opinion on the full financial statements of Tether International, S.A. de C.V. for the year ended December 31, 2025 — the company's first-ever full audit (distinct from its routine quarterly attestations); reserves exceeded liabilities by $6.814 billion at that reporting date, with auditors physically counting every gold bar. Comparing the two dates shows the trend: the audited reserve surplus of $6.81 billion at end-2025 had compressed to $4.11 billion by mid-2026.

Networks and distribution

USDT is issued on 14 networks: Ethereum, Tron, Avalanche, BNB Smart Chain, Solana, TON, Aptos, Near, Celo, Kaia, the Cosmos ecosystem (via Kava), Polkadot AssetHub, Tezos, and Liquid Network; support for five legacy networks — Kusama, Bitcoin Cash SLP, Omni Layer (the original 2014 launch network), EOS, and Algorand — was wound down effective September 1, 2025. As of Q2 2026, Tron holds roughly 47–49% of USDT supply (about $88 billion), and Ethereum roughly 41% (about $75 billion); trackers vary by 1–2 percentage points depending on the measurement date.

Regulatory status

MiCA's transition period ended on July 1, 2026: venues without a full CASP licence must wind down unlicensed services. Tether did not seek an e-money licence, so licensed exchanges — Coinbase, Kraken, Binance EU, Crypto.com, and others — removed USDT pairs for EEA users; Revolut announced a phased delisting through August 31, 2026. In August 2026, the European Commission opened a feedback period on revising MiCA (extended to September 30, 2026) — including access rules for third-country issuers — but this remains a consultation procedure, not an adopted decision. Separately from USDT, Tether launched USAT in February 2026, a US-regulated stablecoin issued through Anchorage Digital Bank — a distinct product not covered by this article.

Incidents

  • On February 23, 2021, the New York Attorney General settled an investigation into Tether and Bitfinex over the use of about $700 million of Tether's reserves to cover a shortfall at Bitfinex; the penalty was $18.5 million, with two years of mandated reserve-composition disclosure and a ban on doing business with New York residents.
  • On October 15, 2021, the CFTC fined Tether $41 million for claiming USDT was fully backed by dollar reserves "at all times" when reserves included unsecured receivables and non-cash assets.
  • After OFAC sanctioned the Tornado Cash mixer in August 2022, Tether initially did not freeze related addresses; on December 9, 2023, it switched to proactively freezing OFAC-SDN-linked addresses, freezing an initial batch of 161 wallets holding about $3.5 million.