Tether Swaps Accounting Firms, Says It Will Publish Monthly Attestation on Stablecoin Backing

Stablecoin issuer Tether has tapped BDO Italia to take over its regular attestation reports and said it plans to publish the reports every month rather than once a quarter.

The firm, a member of the Binder Dijker Otte, or BDO, global network of accounting and consulting firms, will publish the attestations and assurance reports that detail the assets that make up the $67 billion the USDT stablecoin has in reserves, Tether said Thursday.

Stablecoin issuers publish attestations and assurance reports to assure the market that their coins are backed by real assets. Tether began to publish the reports in early 2021 after agreeing to send similar reports to regulators as part of a February 2021 settlement with the New York attorney general's office, which had claimed that USDT wasn't fully backed.

"The decision to work with the BDO organization represents [Tether's] promise to deliver considerable transparency for those holding Tether tokens, providing updates about issued tokens and reserves on a daily basis, supplemented by monthly assurance opinions," the company said in a press release.

The move is "the next step" toward issuing an audit, something Tether executives have promised for months, according to the release.

"The utility of Tether has grown beyond being just a tool for quickly moving in and out of trading positions, and therefore it is mission-critical for us to scale alongside the peer-to-peer and payments markets," Chief Technical Officer Paolo Ardoino said in the statement.

Moore Cayman previously provided Tether's assurance reports. The firm later began operating under the name MHA Cayman.

A Tether spokesperson said an audit "is a priority for us," but did not answer questions about whether BDO Italia was taking over this process as well or if MHA Cayman would continue to work on that specific report.

UPDATE (Aug. 18, 2022, 15:30 UTC): Adds additional detail.