Tether

Tether published its third-quarter results on 30 October with the attestation prepared by BDO, covering Tether International's financial figures and reserves as of 30 September 2026. Net operating profit for the quarter came to $1.5 billion, with the excess reserve buffer nearly doubling to $7.95 billion from $4.1 billion at the end of June (Tether). The buffer had halved in the second quarter, from $8.2 billion at the end of March (The Block), so the third quarter takes it most of the way back.

What the attestation says

Tether's own figures give total assets of $191,451,091,374 against liabilities of $183,496,460,904, of which $183,469,787,261 relate to digital tokens issued, leaving the company asserting that its assets exceed its liabilities by $7,954,630,470 (Tether). USDT issuance held broadly steady at $184 billion across the first three quarters of 2026, and nine-month net operating profit reached $4.5 billion (Tether).

Income came largely from U.S. Treasury bills and reverse repurchase agreements, with direct and indirect Treasury bill holdings of $132.4 billion (Tether). The reserves also include $19.08 billion in physical gold and $8.37 billion in bitcoin, valued at a 30 September price of $83,621.23 per coin (BDO attestation), up from about $5.8 billion of bitcoin at the end of June (Cointelegraph). Tether marks both at market, and its net operating profit excludes those unrealized gains and losses (The Block), so the $1.5 billion profit alone does not account for the buffer's $3.85 billion rise.

What the buffer does and does not mean

The surplus is reserve assets minus all reported liabilities, not a separate pool of cash set aside for redemptions, and the $7.95 billion is about 4.3% of the $183.47 billion in digital-token liabilities. BDO's reasonable-assurance opinion covers a single point in time, 30 September 2026, and states that activity before and after that date was not considered. The notes to the report carry no assurance (BDO attestation).

The freeze came after the reporting period, so the attestation does not reflect it: Tether's chief executive Paolo Ardoino said the company had frozen more than $1.57 billion in USDT linked to the Binance hack (The Block).

What to watch

• Whether the buffer holds, since gold, bitcoin and financial investments are valued at fair value under the report's policies, which makes market prices relevant to the value of the backing (BDO attestation).

Tether is in the news for two things at once: a Senate report that made USDT the focus of a sanctions investigation, and the company's response to it, alongside a run of new investments in payment and AI infrastructure.

The Senate report and Tether's answer

On 19 October, Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino said the company's address freezes had cut Iran-linked stablecoin transaction volumes by 94% since 2023. He framed this as a proactive compliance record rather than a reactive one: Tether froze relevant addresses an average of four weeks before official sanctions arrived from the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control and Israel's NBCTF, according to CryptoBriefing's account of the remarks.

The claims were a response to a Senate report published on 28 September by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, CryptoBriefing reported. CryptoDaily, citing a release from Senator Richard Blumenthal, reported that the inquiry examined 846 wallets that had been sanctioned or targeted for seizure because of Iranian links, and found that 84% of them transacted exclusively or nearly exclusively in USDT.

The two figures answer different questions. Ardoino's 94% describes a fall in activity levels over time across Iran-linked wallets. The Senate's 84% describes which stablecoin a selected set of wallets used. Tether disclosed that it blocked approximately $550 million in USDT linked to Iran over the course of 2026, with freezes in April and July accounting for over $470 million of that. Third-party data points the same way: figures from TRM Labs put USDT's share of on-chain volume in Iran-attributed wallets at 67% in 2025 and 14% in August 2026, CryptoBriefing reported.

Investment week

Away from the Senate story, Tether announced three investments in three days.

On 21 October, Tether led a pre-seed round in Peso, a Bolivian fintech building USDT payment infrastructure. Peso links into Bolivia's banking system through QR codes and ACH networks, and has integrated USDT payments into Yango, a digital services platform operating in Bolivia. The funding is intended to support expansion into Brazil, Colombia and Argentina. The size of the round was not disclosed, Cointelegraph reported.

A day earlier, on 20 October, Tether led a $15 million Series A in Mural, a New York fintech building payment infrastructure for businesses and AI agents, bringing Mural's total funding to $28 million. CryptoBriefing reported that Mural has processed more than $2 billion in payments for end users in 128 countries since launching its API in 2025, with 2026 payment volume already approaching six times the previous year's total. The company was founded by Sinclair Toffa and Chris Fernandes, who previously worked as engineers at Palantir, and North Island Ventures also took part in the round, crypto.news reported.

On 19 October, Tether Capital joined a $1.5 billion Series E in AI chip developer Tenstorrent, which set a post-money valuation of $6.2 billion. The round was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, and CryptoBriefing noted that the new figure more than triples the $2 billion valuation from Tenstorrent's Series D in December 2024.

Why it matters

The Senate investigation is the more consequential of the two stories. A finding that sanctioned wallets transacted almost entirely in USDT puts the token at the centre of US sanctions policy. Tether's answer is that its own enforcement drove the decline in usage, which is a different claim from the one the committee made, and CryptoDaily noted that Tether has not published the methodology or data behind its 94% figure.

The investments point the other way. Peso and Mural build payment rails, and CryptoBriefing described the Tenstorrent stake as "a bet on infrastructure, not on tokens".

What to watch

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is examining USDT usage among sanctioned wallets, and any follow-up hearing or letter would be the next dated step on that thread. On the investment side, Tether has disclosed no timetable for Peso's expansion beyond its stated markets of Brazil, Colombia and Argentina.