Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and market analysts pushed back against S&P Global’s downgraded rating of USDt’s (USDT) ability to maintain its US dollar peg, saying that the ratings agency did not account for all of Tether’s assets and revenues.
The Tether Group’s total assets at the end of Q3 2025 totaled about $215 billion, while its total stablecoin liabilities were about $184.5 billion, according to Ardoino, who referenced Tether’s Q3 attestation report. He added:
“Tether had, at the end of Q3 2025, about $7 billion in excess equity, on top of the about $184.5 billion in stablecoin reserves, plus about another $23 billion in retained earnings as part of our Tether Group equity.
S&P made the same mistake of not considering the additional Group Equity, nor the roughly $500 million in monthly base profits generated by US Treasury yields alone,” Ardoino continued.
S&P Global downgraded USDt’s dollar-peg rating to “weak” on Wednesday, the lowest score on its scale, prompting fear, uncertainty, and doubt from some analysts about the company, which has become a critical piece of crypto market infrastructure.
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Analysts debate Tether’s balance sheet fundamentals
Arthur Hayes, a market analyst and founder of the BitMEX crypto exchange, speculated that Tether is buying large quantities of gold and BTC to compensate for income shortfalls produced by falling US Treasury yields.
As the Federal Reserve slashes interest rates, the gold and BTC should go up in value, Hayes said, but he also warned that a steep correction in these assets could spell trouble for Tether.
“A roughly 30% decline in the gold and BTC position would wipe out their equity, and then USDt would be, in theory, insolvent,” he said.
Joseph Ayoub, the former lead digital asset analyst at financial services giant Citi, said he spent “hundreds” of hours researching Tether as an analyst for the company, and rebuffed Hayes’ analysis.
Tether has excess assets beyond what it reports, has an extremely lucrative business that generates billions of dollars in interest income with only 150 employees, and is better collateralized than traditional banks, Ayoub said.
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