KPMG issues clean audit opinion on Tether Gold's 2025 financials

What happened

Tether's gold-backed token, XAUT, has received an unqualified, or "clean", audit opinion from KPMG on the financial statements of its issuing company, TG Commodities. Tether announced the result on Thursday, November 12, and both Decrypt and Blockonomi reported the details. The opinion covers the financial year ended December 31, 2025.

An unqualified opinion means the auditor concluded the statements fairly present the company's financial position without reservations. Blockonomi reported that KPMG issued the opinion under U.S. accounting principles, and that the engagement covers financial reporting rather than certifying any future reserve balance.

According to Tether, the audit went beyond the usual practice of relying on confirmations from custodians. KPMG physically counted and inspected every gold bar backing the token and checked each bar's identifying information, the company said. Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino, in comments carried by Decrypt, said: "KPMG counted every single bar as part of its Tether Gold audit," adding that he believes XAUT "is on track to become the first true competitor to the gold ETF market."

At the end of 2025, TG Commodities reported holding 520,089.350 fine troy ounces of allocated gold, valued at roughly $2.246 billion, against 520,089.300 XAUT tokens in issue, a gap of 0.050 troy ounces. The bullion sits in Swiss vaults, and each token represents an undivided ownership interest in gold held on specified bars.

Why it matters

The result gives Tether a second clean opinion from a Big Four accounting firm. In August, KPMG signed off on the 2025 financial statements of Tether International, the entity behind the dollar-pegged USDT token. For years, Tether drew criticism for publishing quarterly attestations, point-in-time snapshots of reserves, instead of submitting its finances to a full audit. The company said earlier this year that a Big Four firm was auditing it, without naming the firm, before confirming KPMG.

Tether chief financial officer Simon McWilliams framed the XAUT opinion as part of a wider effort, saying in comments reported by Decrypt that the milestones "advance the progress towards audits across the whole of Tether." Blockonomi noted that the annual audit of financial statements is a different exercise from the periodic reserves attestations the company still publishes, which are limited to a stated date.

What the data shows

The 2025 figures do not reflect the current inventory. A later BDO report, covering September 30, records 827,417.630 fine troy ounces valued at $3.44 billion, alongside the same number of minted XAUT tokens. According to Blockonomi, Tether reported that reserve quantities rose 59% between the two dates, with 766 large bars added to bring the Swiss inventory in that category to 2,057. That September snapshot counted 709,323.660 tokens sold and 118,093.970 available for sale, and Tether separately reported a 73% increase in customer holdings through September.

BDO's September report provided reasonable assurance under ISAE 3000 and expressly excludes activity on other dates, a narrower scope than KPMG's annual audit of the financial statements. The gold held for XAUT met London Good Delivery standards, and an independent third party samples the bars quarterly, according to Blockonomi.

Background

Tether continues to publish quarterly attestations for USDT, prepared by accounting firm BDO. The most recent, covering the period to September 30, reported total reserve assets of $191.5 billion against $183.5 billion in liabilities, an excess buffer of nearly $8 billion, along with $1.5 billion in net operating profit for the third quarter.

Separately from the gold that backs XAUT, Tether has accumulated its own gold holdings and has said it will keep adding to them. Decrypt reported that the company stores that stockpile in a former nuclear bunker in Switzerland.

What to watch

The company has signalled that it wants audits to cover more of its operations, and the next points to watch are whether further entities obtain Big Four opinions and how XAUT's reserve disclosures evolve in the coming quarters. Whether the token gains ground against established gold exchange-traded products, the comparison Ardoino raised, will be measured by flows and holdings rather than by any single audit.

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