Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company holds about 150,000 Bitcoin, worth approximately $11.5 billion at current prices. That estimate is around 50,000 BTC above the holdings implied by Tether International’s latest reserve report.
Ardoino made the comment during a keynote at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano, Switzerland. He did not specify where the additional bitcoin is held, when it was acquired, or whether it belongs to the stablecoin issuer or Tether Investments. His remarks do not establish that Tether recently bought 50,000 BTC.
The company’s third-quarter reserve report, published Oct. 30 with an attestation from BDO, lists $8.37 billion in bitcoin as of Sept. 30, valued at $83,621.23 per coin. That figure implies holdings of about 100,060 BTC, up from roughly 98,930 at the end of June. The report says most of the quarter’s increase in the bitcoin value came from price movements rather than purchases.
One possible explanation for the difference is that Tether has said investments funded by profits are kept separate from the reserves backing USDT. Bitcoin held by Tether Investments would therefore not appear in the reserve attestation. The company has not said whether that accounts for the full gap or disclosed a breakdown of the coins outside its reserves.
Tether’s third-quarter report lists $191.45 billion in reserve assets and $183.50 billion in liabilities, leaving an excess of $7.95 billion. Treasury bills make up about $132.4 billion of the reserves, while bitcoin is valued at $8.37 billion and gold at about $19.1 billion.
The report also records quarterly earnings of about $1.5 billion and earnings of $4.5 billion for the first nine months. Ardoino said at the forum that USDT has more than 730 million users and is adding about 30 million wallets per quarter.
Sources: Bitcoin Magazine.