Tether's $7.95 billion cushion covers 15% of the reserves held outside cash equivalents

Tether International reported $191,451,091,374 of reserves at the end of September, and $139,578,392,166 of that, or 72.9%, was held in cash and cash equivalents, according to its Financial Figures and Reserves Report, which was approved on October 30. The other $51.87 billion, or 27.1%, sat in gold, bitcoin, loans, equities and other investments, and the company's $7.95 billion cushion covers 15.3% of it.

Where the reserves sit

The report splits the reserves into seven categories, as of "11:59 PM UTC" on September 30. The percentages below are shares of total reserves, computed for this article from the report's figures.

Category	US$	Share of reserves
U.S. Treasury bills	122,839,738,995	64.2%
Overnight and term reverse repurchase agreements	16,696,244,243	8.7%
Non-US Treasury bills and cash deposits	42,408,928	0.02%
Cash and cash equivalents, subtotal	139,578,392,166	72.9%
Precious metals	19,084,651,736	10.0%
Secured loans	14,175,117,624	7.4%
Bitcoin	8,367,170,264	4.4%
Other investments	6,004,074,506	3.1%
Public equities	4,177,803,686	2.2%
Corporate bonds	63,881,392	0.03%

Source: Tether International report for September 30, 2026; shares and the reverse repurchase total computed.

What the safest bucket contains

The Treasury bills are, in the report's words, bills "with a weighted average maturity of less than 90 days". The reverse repurchase agreements are of two kinds: overnight agreements, which the report says have a maturity of 1 day and are collateralized by US Treasuries, and term agreements with a residual average maturity of less than 90 days.

The remaining items in the subtotal are small: $21,981,521 of non-US Treasury bills and $20,427,407 of cash and bank deposits.

The assets outside cash equivalents

Gold is the largest of them. The report values the bars "using an XAU price of US$ 4,157.41/Oz closing price as published by Bloomberg on 30 September 2026", so the $19.08 billion moves with the metal's price. Bitcoin is valued with the same kind of September 30 Bloomberg close, at $83,621.23 a coin, and the company says the coins are "held on-chain in wallets controlled by the Company".

Secured loans, at $14.18 billion, are described as "loans over collateralized by assets, subject to margin call and liquidation" mechanisms. The accounting policies say they are measured at amortized cost and that no provision for expected credit losses was identified by management at the reporting date. The notes to the report describe the category but do not name the borrowers or the collateral.

Public equities include "indirect gold, bitcoin, and other asset exposure", so the gold and bitcoin the company bears risk on is somewhat larger than the two dedicated lines.

The cushion in arithmetic

Reserves exceed liabilities by $7,954,630,470, the report says. That is 4.2% of reserves and 4.3% of the $183,496,460,904 of liabilities (both computed).

Set against the $51,872,699,208 outside cash equivalents (computed as total reserves minus the subtotal), the cushion is 15.3%. As an illustration of the arithmetic and not a forecast, a fall of that size across every one of those assets at once would use up the excess; the report does not suggest such a move. Against the four market-priced lines alone (precious metals, bitcoin, public equities and other investments, together $37.63 billion), the cushion is 21.1% (computed).

How the cushion moved this year

The report's change-in-equity table shows equity of $6,814 million at December 31, 2025, a financial result of $1,660 million, net capital movements of $(519) million and $7,955 million at September 30, 2026. The movements add to $1,141 million (computed). The company notes that opening equity was aligned with its audited 2025 accounts, which "differs from the opening equity as at 1 January 2026 previously presented" in earlier reports.

Total assets were $193,458 million at the end of 2025 and $191,451 million at the end of September, and liabilities fell to $183,496 million from $186,644 million. Because the report does not separate how much of the financial result came from price changes, it does not show whether the cushion grew from operations or from asset prices.

What the assurance covers

The auditor's opinion is narrow by design. BDO says it "did not perform procedures or provide any assurance at any other date or time" than September 30. The valuation "is based on normal trading conditions and does not reflect unexpected and extraordinary market conditions", and the going concern assessment requires judgment on which BDO does "not provide any assurance". The company also discloses that it is "a defendant in one civil litigation proceeding", a class action related to the 2017 and 2018 fall in the price of bitcoin, with no provision recognized.

A cushion that is a ratio, not a promise

We think the useful reading of this report is a ratio. Nearly three-quarters of the reserves are short-dated Treasury-linked instruments, which is what a stablecoin that promises redemption on demand needs, and the other 27.1% is where the risk is. A cushion of 15.3% of that bucket is real but not unlimited, and it is measured at a single point in time.

The opportunity is a reserve that can earn more than cash would. The threat is the correlation: gold, bitcoin and equities can fall together, and a margin-called loan book can turn on the same days. We do not forecast price levels. We expect, as a forecast, that readers of stablecoin reports will keep asking for composition detail rather than headline totals, as FinanceInTime reported when the OCC finalized its stablecoin rule, though that is a judgment and not a finding of the report. Our view would change if the next report showed the non-cash share falling or the borrowers and collateral behind the loans being named.

The view in this final section is FinanceInTime's editorial opinion, for information only. It is not investment, tax, legal or other advice, and it does not take your circumstances into account. Forecasts are uncertain and past results do not guarantee future ones.