Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company holds about 150,000 BTC. That is roughly $11.5 billion. He said this on November 4 at the Plan ₿ Forum conference in Lugano, Switzerland.
Tether issues USDT, the largest stablecoin. A stablecoin is a coin whose rate is pegged to the dollar. Every USDT is backed by reserves, and the company discloses their composition in a quarterly report.
According to the latest reporting, the company's bitcoin is $3.8 billion less. For a trader, this is a question of trust in the figures from the issuer of the most widely used stablecoin on the market.
Where did the difference come from?
Ardoino: "We ourselves have plus or minus 150,000 Bitcoin. Not that much, but it is honestly earned money".
- Reserve report as of September 30, 2026. In it, Tether listed BTC worth $8.37 billion.
- Valuation of $83,621 per coin. By that, this is about 100,060 BTC.
- A gap of about 50,000 BTC. That is how much is missing from the stated figure.
There are no details. Ardoino did not specify where these coins are held or when they were bought.
Why is this not a hole in the reserves?
Own investments are a separate line item. The company previously explained that purchases through Tether Investments are financed from profit and excess capital.
- USDT reserves - the assets that back the stablecoin.
- Tether Investments - the company's own portfolio, accounted for separately from reserves.
- Bottom line - the discrepancy itself does not yet indicate either new purchases or a shortfall in stablecoin backing.
Purchases began in May 2023. Since then, Tether has directed up to 15% of realized operating profit to regular BTC purchases. Hence the accumulated volume.
What else was said in Lugano?
- 730 million users of the company's services.
- about 30 million new wallets in the quarter.
- over 50 EH/s - the capacity of the mining project that Tether assembled together with partners, one of the largest.
- Independence Stack - open technologies for energy, mining, self-custody wallets and local artificial intelligence models.
What's next?
The next quarterly reserve report will provide clarity. Whether the disputed 50,000 BTC appear in the disclosure will become clear from it.
- Before the report, the figure of 150,000 BTC remains a statement from the conference.
- For a trader, the size of their own BTC position matters more: choose a challenge for crypto in advance, and compare conditions in the catalog of prop firms.
Do you know your own BTC volumes by heart?
Next to figures in the billions, a personal balance looks completely different. The same percentage move in BTC yields a different amount because of position size. Entry precision is secondary here. In prop trading, the notional for a trade is allocated by a third-party company: it checks the trader for compliance with risk limits and shares the profit with them. It is calmer to understand this path before the next strong move.