Tether taps Big Four firm for audit after years of infamous vagueness

Tether is finally doing the thing it kept saying it would do for years—getting a real audit. CEO Paolo Ardoino confirmed the company is “engaging with a Big Four accounting firm,” though he didn’t say which one or when the audit would happen. He said it’s now “feasible” thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump’s crypto-friendly policies.

“It’s our top priority,” Ardoino said. He claims the regulatory environment has changed completely, and that Trump’s crypto push makes it easier. Tether has been promising transparency forever, but so far, it only puts out quarterly attestations, not full audits.

Tether seeks Trump-era support to push audit forward

Ardoino didn’t say if it’s PwC, EY, KPMG, or Deloitte—but said they’re talking to one of them. He pointed to Trump’s stance as a green light. “If the President of the United States says this is top priority for the U.S., Big Four auditing firms will have to listen,” he said.

This is all part of Tether’s latest push to prove it actually backs the $140 billion worth of stablecoins it has issued. It says every coin is supported by dollar-denominated assets. The goal now is to finally show the math. The firm recently hired Simon McWilliams as CFO to lead the audit effort.

This isn’t coming out of nowhere. Trump has signed an executive order for a strategic crypto reserve and is promising new rules for digital assets.

Ardoino took a shot at U.S. regulators under Biden, calling their actions “Operation Chokepoint 2.0,” a phrase the crypto crowd uses to describe the government’s campaign to cut off crypto from the banking system.

Meanwhile, Tether keeps stacking U.S. debt. In 2024, it bought more than $33.1 billion in Treasury bills, making it the seventh biggest buyer of U.S. government debt.

As of December 31, it held over $94 billion in Treasurys and more than $108 million in bank deposits, based on numbers from BDO Italia.

According to Ardoino, 99% of those Treasury bills are held with Cantor Fitzgerald. And now that former Cantor CEO Howard Lutnick is Trump’s commerce secretary, it all sounds like one big reunion.

Tether gets bigger than BlackRock, keeps dodging rules

Tether has $120 billion in assets. Most of it is in U.S. Treasurys. The rest is a mix of bitcoin and gold. It made $6.2 billion in profit last year, beating BlackRock by $700 million. Ardoino bragged that with less than 100 employees, the company makes more money per person than anyone.

But it’s not all glory. According to a Wall Street Journal report, this unregulated coin is getting used to get around U.S. sanctions. Russian oligarchs, Venezuelan oil firms, and even terror groups like Hamas have used Tether to move money.

“We need a regulatory framework that doesn’t allow offshore dollar-backed stablecoin providers to play by a different set of rules,” said Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo in his testimony to Congress. He called out Tether by name.

The Journal dug through blockchain data, court records, and private messages. They found Venezuelan oil payments made in Tether, sanctioned groups laundering money, and a huge black market. Tether says it freezes wallets tied to criminals. Ardoino claimed, “We have a proactive approach to safeguarding our ecosystem against illicit activities.”

That sounds nice, but ChainArgos says that from 2018 to June 2024, Tether blacklisted 2,713 wallets holding $153 billion. Only $1.4 billion was frozen. The rest moved too fast to catch.

The company says it can track everything on public blockchains and even destroy tokens held in wallets if needed. But it’s like a never-ending Whac-A-Mole game.

Tether turns up everywhere—war zones, scams, economies in collapse

Back in 2014, Tether started with a weird founding team. One of them, Giancarlo Devasini, was a plastic surgeon. Another was William Quigley, who called the idea of profiting from billions in backing “a fantasy.”

Quigley and the others left early. Devasini stayed and still runs the company today. He lives in a luxury villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Ardoino has become the face of it all.

Tether really took off during the 2020–2021 bull run. Its market cap went from $4 billion to $80 billion fast. Traders loved it for moving in and out of bets without touching banks.

Now, it’s used in all kinds of places regular dollars can’t go. In Iran, a platform called TetherLand lets people swap their rials for Tether. In Argentina and Turkey, where inflation is out of control, people use Tether to save money and make everyday purchases. Over 300 million people use Tether, according to Ardoino.

But criminals use it too. Southeast Asian money launderers love Tether, according to a 2024 UN report. The tokens bounce from one wallet to another so fast it’s hard to trace them. That same report said Tether is a “preferred choice” for bad actors in the region.

The structure is simple. Direct customers wire dollars to Tether Holdings, and the company issues tokens backed by U.S. Treasurys. But once those tokens hit the open market, anything can happen. Exchanges and brokerages all over the world move the coins, and nobody watches the secondary market.

In Venezuela, PdVSA, the state oil company, started demanding oil payments in Tether in 2020. Buyers were told to send coins to specific wallets. Others just swapped suitcases of cash for Tether, then spent it on prepaid crypto cards.

That setup didn’t just help Maduro’s government dodge sanctions—it fueled corruption. Middlemen kept the money. The scandal blew up so badly that it forced the oil minister to step down. “This cryptocurrency’s use only has served to perpetuate gigantic levels of corruption,” said former oil minister Rafael Ramírez.

Even so, for regular Venezuelans, Tether became survival. Inflation hit 2 million percent. Currency controls blocked overseas payments. A guy named Guillermo Goncalvez started a platform called El Dorado that connects users for peer-to-peer Tether trading. The platform has over 150,000 users. “USDT is the digital dollar for all Venezuelans,” he said.

In Russia, Tether is everywhere. A report from a Russian research group found that importers use it to swap rubles for foreign currencies. Rosbank, a major lender, helps clients send Tether to suppliers.

A fixer named Ekaterina Zhdanova arranged deals worth hundreds of millions in Tether, according to Telegram chats and blockchain data. She’s from a Siberian town but built a luxury business helping rich Russians dodge sanctions. She handled so much cash they needed planes to move it.

One client wanted to buy $10 million in Tether per month for a total of $300 million. The money was going to be handed over in Turkey or the UAE. “They will use planes to pick up the cash,” she said.

Zhdanova was later sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury. French cops arrested her at an airport as part of a separate money laundering case. She’s still in custody.

Now, Tether is investing in businesses that use its token for daily payments. More usage means more token issuance. More issuance means more dollars to manage. In Tbilisi, Georgia, shops show the Tether logo outside. ATMs let people buy the coin with cash. It’s become the go-to currency when real dollars are blocked.

Tether has become the shadow dollar—moving money anywhere, fast, without much oversight. And now it wants a Big Four audit. Maybe. Eventually. If the vibes are right.

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