KPMG audit confirms $2.2 billion of gold behind Tether Gold

Tether said on Nov. 12 that KPMG's U.S. firm completed an independent audit of TG Commodities, the company that issues its gold-backed token Tether Gold (XAUT), and issued an unqualified opinion on the financial statements for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025. The announcement said the audited statements show the token fully backed by allocated physical gold.

As of Dec. 31, 2025, TG Commodities held 520,089.350 fine troy ounces of allocated gold valued at $2.246 billion against 520,089.300 XAUT in issue, according to the release. KPMG physically counted and inspected every individual bar backing the token, verifying the existence and identifying information of each bar instead of relying only on custodian confirmations, Tether said. The gold sits in vaults in Switzerland and meets London Good Delivery standards, and each token represents an undivided ownership interest in gold on specified bars. Beyond the audit, Tether said management hires a qualified independent third party each quarter to test a sample of bars against what refineries report.

An unqualified opinion is issued without reservations, exceptions or caveats, and Tether described it as the most positive outcome a business can receive from its independent auditor. "KPMG counted every single bar as part of its Tether Gold audit," chief executive Paolo Ardoino said in the release, adding that he believes XAUT "is on track to become the first true competitor to the gold ETF market." Chief financial officer Simon McWilliams said the audited figures match the reserves Tether publishes every quarter and that the company started its audit program with its largest businesses, USD and XAU.

Decrypt noted that the audit is Tether's second from a Big Four firm, following KPMG's clean opinion on Tether International, the issuer of USDT, in August. Tether for years relied on quarterly attestations, which offer a snapshot of reserves at a single moment rather than a full-year examination of the financial statements. The company's latest USDT attestation, prepared by BDO and covering the period to Sept. 30, showed total reserve assets of $191.5 billion against $183.5 billion in liabilities, an excess of almost $8 billion, and Tether reported $1.5 billion in net operating profit for the third quarter.

Unchained flagged limits on what the opinion covers. Tether has not published KPMG's report or the audited statements, Unchained said, and it could not find either on Tether's sites, so only the company's announcement of the audit is public. The opinion covers TG Commodities alone and its finances as of one date, December 2025, not tokens issued afterward. Unchained's read of the Ethereum contract showed 827,417.63 XAUT in existence on Nov. 12, and by its calculation roughly 37% of the current supply was added, net of redemptions, after the audited balance sheet date. Tether said on Nov. 4 that the gold behind XAUT grew 59% from the end of 2025 to Sept. 30 and reached a record $3.44 billion.

Each XAUT token stands for one fine troy ounce of gold, and Tether publishes quarterly reserve reports on that metal, with the most recent one as of Sept. 30 checked by BDO. Unchained described that BDO filing as an attestation, in which an accountant verifies one claim at a single moment, while an audit examines a company's full financial statements across a year.

Ardoino's release framed the audit as the proof behind the token: he said that just as with USD, the backing behind XAU "is no longer just a Tether promise. It's a signed opinion from a Big Four auditor." The audit does not extend to Tether's own corporate gold reserves, which the company stores in a former nuclear bunker in Switzerland and has said it will keep adding to, Decrypt reported. One day before the audit announcement, Anchorage Digital let institutional clients pledge XAUT for loans from other Anchorage clients.