Stablecoins · Explained

KPMG gives unqualified opinion on Tether Gold issuer's 2025 accounts

The Big Four firm audited TG Commodities' 2025 statements and counted the bars behind XAUT, though the report itself has not been published.

CoinDesk CC AI Desk

12 Nov 2026, 18:59 UTC · 4 min read

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KPMG gives unqualified opinion on Tether Gold issuer's 2025 accounts — Image: Unchained

Key takeaways

Clean opinion. KPMG found TG Commodities' 2025 statements fairly present its finances in all material respects under U.S. accounting rules.
Physical checks. Tether said the auditor counted and inspected each gold bar rather than relying only on the custodian's confirmations.
Second Big Four audit. The opinion follows KPMG's August sign-off on Tether International, the issuer of the USDT dollar token.

What happened

Tether announced on Thursday that KPMG's U.S. firm gave TG Commodities, the company that issues the gold-backed token Tether Gold (XAUT), an unqualified opinion on its 2025 financial statements. An unqualified opinion is an auditor's finding, made without reservations, that a company's statements fairly present its finances in all material respects under U.S. accounting rules. Unchained and Bitcoin.com News both reported the announcement.

The examination covers the financial year ended Dec. 31, 2025, rather than the issuer's position today. According to Tether, KPMG counted and inspected individual gold bars backing the token instead of depending solely on confirmations from the custodian. The metal is held in vaults in Switzerland and meets London Good Delivery standards, the reports said.

At year-end, the audited statements identified 520,089.350 fine troy ounces of allocated gold, meaning specific bars set aside for token holders, valued at roughly $2.246 billion. That compared with 520,089.300 XAUT outstanding at the same date. Each token represents one fine troy ounce of gold, the measure of a bar's pure gold content.

First $0.9994Latest $0.99920.0% over the period

Points are daily observations, not closing prices.

Why it matters

The sign-off is the second completed audit of a Tether business by a Big Four firm, the industry shorthand for Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC, after KPMG's opinion in August covering Tether International, the issuer of the USDT dollar stablecoin. Chief Financial Officer Simon McWilliams said in the release that the audited figures matched the reserves Tether has published each quarter, and that the company's plan was to begin with its largest and most complex businesses. Chief Executive Paolo Ardoino said he believes XAUT is on track to become the first genuine competitor to the gold exchange-traded fund market. Bitcoin.com News noted that an unqualified audit of historical statements offers different assurances from a reserves attestation and does not by itself establish current holdings or guarantee future solvency.

What the data shows

Tether's quarterly reserve reporting is handled separately from the annual audit. The most recent report, dated Sept. 30, was checked by accounting firm BDO as an attestation, a review of one specific claim at a single moment rather than a full examination of a year's financial statements. Tether said on Nov. 4 that its XAUT gold holdings grew 59% between the end of 2025 and Sept. 30. Unchained reported that the XAUT contract on Ethereum showed 827,417.63 tokens at 12:06 p.m. ET on Thursday, unchanged from Sept. 30, and calculated that about 37% of the current supply was added, net of redemptions, after the balance sheet date KPMG audited. Both counts include unsold tokens held by a Tether-related company: 110,871.66 at Dec. 31, 2025, and 118,093.97 at Sept. 30, according to BDO's reports.

Background

Tether has for years published quarterly reserve breakdowns reviewed by an accounting firm, while full audits of its entities arrived more recently. Alongside the annual audit, Tether says an independent specialist carries out quarterly sample testing to validate refinery information, giving another check beyond the yearly financial review. Bitcoin.com News reported that the gold token news arrived as the stablecoin sector has recorded a broad downturn since mid-May. The same outlet noted that on Wednesday Anchorage Digital began allowing institutional clients to pledge XAUT as collateral for loans from other Anchorage clients.

What is still unclear

Tether has not released KPMG's audit report or the audited statements, and Unchained said it could not locate either on Tether's websites. The announcement also does not state when KPMG signed the opinion. The scope is limited to TG Commodities and its finances for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025, so it does not speak to the issuer's reserves or condition at any later date.

What to watch

Whether Tether publishes the underlying audited statements and KPMG's report will determine how much detail outsiders can examine. Also unresolved is whether XAUT can win share from established gold exchange-traded funds, a comparison Ardoino has promoted but that the audit does not address. The next markers are the quarterly reserve attestations covering periods after the audited year-end.

Questions readers ask

What does an unqualified opinion mean?

It is an auditor's conclusion, issued without reservations, that a company's financial statements fairly present its financial position in all material respects under the applicable accounting rules, in this case U.S. standards.

Does the audit confirm Tether Gold's reserves today?

No. It covers the year ended Dec. 31, 2025. Current reserve figures come from separate quarterly attestations, the latest covering Sept. 30 and reviewed by BDO.

How is an audit different from a reserves attestation?

An audit examines a company's full financial statements across a year, while an attestation checks one specific claim at a single point in time. The two provide different levels of assurance and are not interchangeable.