News, data and analysis on tokenized assets, market design and digital economic systems.
El Salvador-licensed issuer of USDT, the largest dollar token, which is not offered to US customers; a separate US token, USAT, is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank under Office of the Comptroller of the Currency supervision.
Issuer of USDT, the largest dollar token, with roughly $183bn of token liabilities and $141bn of direct and indirect exposure to US Treasury bills as at 31 March 2026 on the BDO attestation that also reported $8.23bn of reserves in excess of liabilities and $1.04bn of quarterly profit. The group took a digital asset service provider and stablecoin issuer licence from El Salvador and moved its headquarters there in January 2025; USDT is not offered to US customers, and a separate US token, USAT, is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank under Office of the Comptroller of the Currency supervision. Because reserve assets of that size sit almost entirely in short-dated government paper, its subscription and redemption flows pass through into the Treasury bill market rather than being absorbed by a bank balance sheet.
Developments in which Tether is a named party, newest first.
Ways and Means votes on Wednesday morning on 114 pages nobody has read to the end. The wash sale rule applies to dispositions after the date of introduction, which was Monday. The $10 fee exemption waits for 2028.
A verified complaint in Manhattan seeks forfeiture of 61,192,367.59 USDT across ten Tron addresses as the proceeds of Iranian oil sold to Chinese buyers. Its own table shows the issuer froze every one of them in June and July 2025.
The exchange says its reserve ratio is above 100 per cent and every asset can be withdrawn.
Two years of Bank Secrecy Act filings and 33,904 reports, and the finding that matters on this beat is not the total: whatever the victim was persuaded to buy, the proceeds were nearly always turned into stablecoins, and almost exclusively into USDT.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control determined on 24 August that section 1(a)(i) of Executive Order 13902 now applies to the digital asset sector of the Iranian economy, so any person anywhere who operates in it may be designated.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board proposed on 18 August that some stablecoins may sit on a balance sheet as cash equivalents, and set three conditions.
The Treasury proposed the rules deciding who may issue a dollar stablecoin in the United States, and read the GENIUS Act to let a qualifying foreign issuer do it here directly rather than only reach the market at second hand.
KPMG US issued an unqualified opinion on the 2025 financial statements of Tether International, the entity Tether says is the only issuer of USDT, and found reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814bn at 31 December 2025.
BDO's attestation shows $183.6bn of USDT backed by $187.8bn of assets at 30 June—an excess of $4.11bn, down from $8.23bn a quarter earlier.
The federally regulated dollar token Tether launched in January now mints and burns natively on the payments network, where it can also pay for gas.
A memorandum of understanding puts securities tokenization, blockchain settlement and investor education on the table at East Africa's largest exchange, with the role of USDT still undefined.
The exchange holding Nigeria's first provisional digital asset approval says businesses can now settle in 14 currencies across nine African markets and beyond, a bet that regulated rails can undercut some of the world's costliest payment corridors.
Amanah Advisors certifies XAUT as compliant with Islamic finance principles, as Tether courts Islamic banks and savers in markets where gold, not the dollar, is the trusted store of value.
Trading volume in tokenized gold reached $90.7bn in the first quarter of 2026, exceeding the total for all of 2025, according to research published by CEX.IO.
Tether announced USAT on 27 January 2026, a dollar stablecoin issued in the United States by Anchorage Digital Bank under the GENIUS Act framework, with Cantor Fitzgerald as reserve custodian and preferred primary dealer.
H.R. 10357 rewrites the tax treatment of digital assets across seven titles and was noticed for a vote on 16 September. Its wash sale extension applies to dispositions after the date of introduction, the par rule for licensed dollar stablecoins from 2027, and the $10 de minimis fee exception and simplified accounting election from 2028.
The verified complaint in 26 Civ. 8010 names ten Tron addresses holding 61,192,367.59 USDT as the proceeds of Iranian oil sold to Chinese buyers. Its own table dates the issuer's freezes to 15 June and 26 July 2025, and it describes about $508m of the same trade clearing through a New York correspondent account.
The exchange said it would cease operations on 22 December 2026, nine years to the day after its launch. Spot trading ends 29 September, when non-USDT holdings are sold into outside markets and CET is repurchased at 0.005 USDT. Unwithdrawn USDT then carries a monthly charge of 5 per cent of the closing balance until claims close in August 2028.
The Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network published a Financial Trend Analysis and an alert on 3 September 2026 covering 33,904 Bank Secrecy Act reports filed from 8 September 2023 to 31 December 2025 and about $12.7bn of reported activity. Its finding for this beat is that proceeds were nearly always converted into stablecoins, almost exclusively USDT.
A one-page determination effective 24 August 2026 extends section 1(a)(i) of Executive Order 13902 to the aviation, digital asset, gold, shipping and technology sectors of the Iranian economy, so any person anywhere operating in them may be designated. The same rule suspends five general licences indefinitely, including the one authorising noncommercial personal remittances to Iran.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board proposed illustrative examples for Topic 230 on 18 August 2026 setting out when a digital asset meets the existing definition of cash equivalents: an on-demand contractual redemption right, a direct right against the issuer, and segregated short-term liquid reserves held at least one for one. Comments close on 19 November 2026.
The Treasury issued a notice of proposed rulemaking on 17 August 2026 implementing section 3 of the GENIUS Act, published the next day at 91 FR 53368 with comments due by 19 October. It would create 12 CFR part 1523, read section 18(a) to let qualifying foreign issuers issue in the United States, and treat market making in an unlawful issuance as participation in it.
Tether announced on 13 August 2026 that KPMG US had audited the financial statements of Tether International, S.A. de C.V. for the year ended 31 December 2025 and issued an unqualified opinion, with reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814bn. The statements and the auditor's report were not published.
Tether published its second-quarter 2026 attestation on 31 July, examined by BDO as of 30 June. Total liabilities were $183,622,105,630 against total assets of $187,751,426,411, leaving excess reserves of $4,109,529,196, against $8.23bn three months earlier. The company reported net operating profit of about $1.5bn for the quarter, gold holdings above 146 tonnes after adding 14 during the period, and a reduction of about $2.38bn in secured lending exposure.
Tether's USAT, the dollar token issued by Anchorage Digital Bank under the GENIUS Act regime, went live on Celo on 29 July 2026, its first network beyond Ethereum. The deployment mints and burns natively rather than bridging a representation, and Celo's fee abstraction mechanism lets USAT pay transaction fees, so a holder can transact without first acquiring the network's own asset. The announcement ran through Celo's channels; Tether's newsroom carried no release of its own.
Tether and the Nairobi Securities Exchange announced a memorandum of understanding on 28 July 2026 covering investor education, blockchain-based infrastructure for securities tokenization and instant settlement, streamlined anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer onboarding under Kenyan rules, and asset tokenization on Tether's Hadron platform, with what the release calls potential integration of USDT as a settlement layer. The memorandum binds neither party to build anything and names no timetable, pilot or regulatory approval.
Tether announced USAT, a dollar stablecoin issued in the United States by Anchorage Digital Bank under the GENIUS Act framework, with Cantor Fitzgerald as reserve custodian and preferred primary dealer. The token sits alongside USDT, which continues to be issued outside the United States.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered Tether to pay a $41m civil penalty, finding that between 1 June 2016 and 25 February 2019 the company misrepresented that every USDT in circulation was backed by an equivalent amount of fiat currency. The order found that Tether held sufficient fiat reserves to back tokens outstanding on only 27.6% of days in a 26-month sample from 2016 to 2018, and did not disclose that reserves included unsecured receivables and non-fiat assets.
The New York Attorney General ended Bitfinex's and Tether's trading activity with New Yorkers and imposed an $18.5m penalty, finding that from mid-2017 Tether "had no access to banking, anywhere in the world" and lacked reserves sufficient to back tethers one-for-one as claimed. The office also found that the day after Tether's 1 November 2018 verification of full backing, funds began moving out of the account to Bitfinex, and that Bitfinex had concealed roughly $850m of losses tied to the payment processor Crypto Capital Corp.
What issued, what settled, what the supervisors changed, with the numbers behind it and a note on what the numbers do not show. One email, Thursday mornings.
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