Accounting is not a very physical job, but tell that to the KPMG gnomes who just spent weeks lugging around gold bars in a secret Swiss cavern. This came after stablecoin giant Tether tapped the Big Four firm to carry out an audit of its reserves, which includes around 150 tons of bullion that back the company’s popular gold token. “It was a heavy-lifting exercise,” CEO Paolo Ardoino tells me of the audit, which not only confirmed that, yes, the gold is all there, but that Tether’s overall reserves exceed its liabilities by $6.8 billion.
The KPMG audit should finally put to rest one of crypto’s longest-running conspiracies: That Tether’s $183 billion supply of USDT stablecoins is not properly backed, and that the company would one day pull the mother of all rug pulls. So much for that. While hyper-secretive Tether is unlikely to win a prize for corporate transparency any time soon, the KPMG seal of approval means the media can turn to more interesting questions—like what the company plans to do next. For starters, it’s notable that, like many others in the blockchain world, Tether is trying to shake the “crypto” label.
