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BREAKING: Tether says it completed long-promised 'Big Four' audit of finances behind $180 billion USDT stablecoin

For years, skeptics said the dollars behind Tether weren't all there, and that no serious auditor would ever sign off to prove otherwise.

On Thursday, one did.

KPMG's US arm, one of the Big Four accounting firms, audited Tether's 2025 accounts and handed back an unqualified opinion, the cleanest verdict an auditor gives.

It found the reserves backing USDT, the dollar-pegged token most of crypto trades through, ran about $6.8 billion ahead of what Tether owes its holders.

The auditors went past the headline number, testing the systems and the transactions, tracing counterparties, and physically counting every gold bar Tether holds.

This answers a question that's hung over crypto for the longest time.

More than $180 billion of USDT is in circulation, and it's the rail traders route dollars through on nearly every exchange, so whether it was fully backed was never a small matter.

Until now, Tether leaned on quarterly attestations, point-in-time snapshots from a smaller firm rather than a full audit of the books.

It paid $18.5 million to settle with the New York attorney general in 2021 over claims it had misstated that very thing.

A Big Four audit with a clean opinion is the thing its detractors said would never come.

The timing isn't an accident.

Tether is pushing into the US under the new federal stablecoin rules, and a real audit is the price of entry there.

The opinion confirms the books were accurate at year-end.

It doesn't promise Tether can meet every redemption in a run, and it isn't a verdict on the business itself.

The dollars were there when KPMG counted them.

That's further than Tether has ever let anyone look. 🚀

Imagine turning down Uber at a valuation of $10 million, only to watch it go public at over $80 billion.

That’s exactly what happened to Mark Cuban… a 799,900% return, gone.

But original Shark Tank investor Kevin Harrington built his career doing the opposite: spotting asymmetric opportunities before they go mainstream.

Like Uber turned vehicles into income-generating assets, Mode Mobile is turning smartphones into income streams.

They were named the #1 fastest-growing software company by Deloitte and have already helped their users earn and save over $1B.

Kevin Harrington invested early.

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Secure shares at $0.52 while the pre-IPO window is still open.

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^{Please read the offering circular at invest.modemobile.com. This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile’s Regulation A Offering.}

On CNBC, Larry Fink said the thing bulls have been waiting to hear from the most powerful man in asset management.

Fink is the founder and CEO of BlackRock, which manages more money than any firm on earth and runs the largest Bitcoin ETF in the world.

Read that carefully, because it's a full-circle moment.

His concern was never Bitcoin itself. It was the leverage stacked on top of it. The borrowed money, the liquidation cascades, the structure that turns a normal correction into a 50% drawdown.

That structure has now been flushed. And in his read, what's left is more stability.

That lines up exactly with what Dylan LeClair showed on-chain. The forced sellers are gone. 82% of the network now sits in long-term holder hands. The coins have moved from weak hands to strong ones.

And Fink isn't hedging on what comes next either. He said he's very bullish on markets over the next 12 months, driven by the technological revolution expanding margins across the board. BlackRock's own margins rose 260 basis points in a year on the back of it.

The leverage got washed out. The floor got firmer.

And the biggest allocator alive is leaning in. 🧼

Today we’ll be taking a look at the amount of Bitcoin available for sale on exchanges.

Here’s how to interpret this metric:

2.71 million BTC on exchanges. Unchanged on two weeks ago.

Flat, and flat again.

The balance rolled off its 2.722 million top a month back and has held near 2.71 million ever since, two prints running with no real move.

Exchange reserves fall when coins head to cold storage or custody, and rise when holders send them in to sell.

A flat line means the two cancelled out, nobody rushing for the exits and nobody rushing to self-custody either.

The year-long drain still frames it, from around 2.9 million last August to 2.71 million now, but it has stalled here rather than pushing to fresh lows.

Bitcoin's supply squeeze has gone quiet, neither draining further nor handing coins back. 💪

Hawaii To Ban Cash Deposits at Crypto ATMs From October. Kiosks will no longer accept cash for crypto, although they may still dispense cash or swap digital assets.

Trezor warns 14,000 customers after fulfilment partner suffers data breach. Customer contact and shipping data were exposed, but devices, backups, and Trezor’s wallet infrastructure remained secure.

SEC allows Franklin Templeton funds to invest in onchain money fund. No-action relief lets Franklin funds use the firm’s tokenized government money fund under 12 conditions.

Onchain lender Figure nearly triples quarterly profits as loan marketplace volume surges to $4.3 billion. Net income rose 192% to $87 million as blockchain-loan marketplace volume reached $4.3 billion.

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Because what would the crypto world be without its share of memes?

Trivia Answer: Privacy-focused digital payments 🥳

Monero obscures transaction senders, recipients and amounts by default.

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