Tether's CEO Says It Holds 150,000 Bitcoin. Its Own Reserve Report Implies 50,000 Fewer

Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino told the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano, Switzerland that the stablecoin issuer owns "give or take 150,000 bitcoin ourselves," adding, "It's not much, but it's honest work." At current prices Decrypt put the stack at roughly $11.5 billion.

The problem is the paper trail doesn't match the podium. Tether's third-quarter reserve attestation — the one covering the assets backing USDT — lists $8.37 billion of bitcoin valued at $83,621 per coin, which works out to about 100,060 BTC. Ardoino's 150,000 figure is therefore roughly 50,000 coins, or close to $3.8 billion, beyond what the company's public disclosure accounts for.

Ardoino did not say where the extra coins sit or when they were bought, so his remark is not evidence of a fresh purchase of that size. Tether has long maintained that its corporate bitcoin holdings are separate from the reserves backing USDT, which would explain a gap in principle — but the attestation is the only audited-adjacent number on the table, and it does not show the other 50,000.

The accumulation itself is old news: in May 2023 Tether said it would direct up to 15% of net realized operating profits into bitcoin and self-custody the coins. The company has the cash flow to do it, reporting $1.5 billion in net operating profit in Q3 alone.

Key facts

• Ardoino said Tether holds "give or take 150,000 bitcoin," worth ~$11.5 billion at current prices — keynote at the Plan ₿ Forum, Lugano, per Decrypt (Nov. 3, 2026).
• Tether's Q3 reserve attestation lists $8.37B of bitcoin at $83,621/coin ≈ 100,060 BTC — implying a 50,000 BTC ($3.8B) gap versus the CEO's figure (Decrypt, citing the attestation).
• Q3 reserves: $191.45B assets vs $183.50B liabilities; $7.95B surplus, nearly double June's $4.11B. T-bills ~$132.4B (Q3 report, via Decrypt).
• Net operating profit of $1.5B in Q3; 15%-of-profit bitcoin policy since May 2023 (Decrypt).
• Tether began its first full financial audit, with KPMG, this year (Decrypt).

The real-world read

"It's honest work" is a convenient line from a company that has spent years fending off questions about whether USDT is fully backed — and the one concrete number it publishes, the attestation, contradicts the number its CEO said out loud. The separate-corporate-holdings explanation is plausible, but it's an assertion, not a disclosure: the extra 50,000 coins are, by definition, unverified until something audited shows them. Treat the 150,000 figure as a self-reported claim from an interested party, not a confirmed balance. Note too that the 730-million-users and 30-million-wallets-a-quarter stats Ardoino cited came in a profit-funded product pitch — promotional framing, not independently checked. The KPMG audit, if completed, is what would close the gap; it hasn't yet.

Opinion, and whose

Ardoino's characterization that 150,000 BTC is "not much" is his own framing; the audited picture remains the Q3 attestation's ~100,060 BTC backing USDT.

Sources

• Decrypt (Jose Antonio Lanz / Decrypt Staff, Nov. 3, 2026) — reported Ardoino's Lugano keynote remarks and reconciled them against Tether's Q3 reserve attestation and reserve totals. Secondary source; the underlying figures trace to Tether's own Q3 report and Ardoino's conference statements, both interested-party disclosures.

This is news reporting, not financial advice.