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Tether posts $1.04 billion Q1 profit, reaches $8.23 billion reserve buffer

The stablecoin issuer said the crypto market was highly volatile during the first quarter.

By Olivier Acuna|Edited by Sheldon Reback May 1, 2026, 4:23 p.m. 2 min readMake preferred on Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino (Modified by CoinDesk)

What to know:

• Tether reported first-quarter net profit of $1.04 billion and said its excess reserves rose to a record $8.23 billion.
• The issuer of the USDT stablecoin said its total assets are just under $192 billion against liabilities of slightly more than $183.5 billion, with most reserves in U.S. government-backed instruments.
• Tether now counts roughly $20 billion in physical gold and about $7 billion in bitcoin among its reserves, as stablecoins see growing use in international payments.

Tether, issuer of the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, said first-quarter net profit was $1.04 billion and excess reserves increased to a record $8.23 billion.

The company did not provide year-earlier or fourth-quarter figures. It reported a net profit of more than $10 billion for all of 2025.

The amount of the dollar-pegged USDT in circulation remained stable, with total token-related liabilities of about $183 billion as of March 31, the firm said in its quarterly report. The company’s total assets are just under $192 billion, it said.

The report was released at a time of increasing global demand for stablecoins as they find uses outside crypto trading as a mechanism for international payments. Just this week, Visa announced expansion of its stablecoin settlement pilot to nine blockchains, adding Base, Polygon, Canton Network, Arc and Tempo to existing support for Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche and Stellar.

Excess reserves, up from $6.3 billion at end-2025, were supported by "continued profitability and a reserve base concentrated in short-duration, high-quality liquid instruments,” the company said.

USDT is the third-largest cryptocurrency, behind bitcoin BTC$78,207.06 and ether (ETH), with a market capitalization of just under $190 billion.

The majority of Tether’s reserves are held in U.S. government-backed instruments and short-term liquidity facilities, the firm said, adding that it is the 17th-largest holder of U.S. Treasuries globally. Tether has become a top 10 buyer of U.S. Treasuries over the past two years, surpassing Taiwan, Israel and the UAE.

Its physical gold holdings are roughly $20 billion and its bitcoin reserve is approximately $7 billion, it said.

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