On November 3, during his keynote at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano, Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino put a number on the stablecoin issuer’s Bitcoin position for the first time in public: the company holds “give or take 150,000 Bitcoin,” a stack he valued at more than $11.5 billion. The disclosure, which followed the October 30 publication of Tether’s third-quarter attestation, marks a sharp upward revision from the roughly 100,000 BTC implied by the company’s September 30 balance sheet — and it would make the issuer of USDT the second-largest disclosed corporate holder of Bitcoin, behind only Strategy.
The claim is a spoken figure, not an audited line item. Ardoino used the phrase “give or take 150,000 Bitcoin” in a keynote posted to his X account. The most recent BDO-prepared attestation, dated September 30, listed about $8.37 billion of directly held Bitcoin — roughly 100,000 coins at the $83,621.23 price BDO used to value the position. The distance between those two figures is where the analysis begins.
The 150,000 BTC Figure Ardoino Disclosed in Lugano
Ardoino’s keynote framed the number as one pillar of a broader corporate story. He said Tether serves more than 730 million users globally and adds around 30 million new wallets each quarter, then described the Bitcoin position as part of what the company calls its “Independence Stack” — an initiative spanning energy, Bitcoin mining, peer-to-peer communications, self-custody wallets and on-device AI.
Two points matter for anyone trying to reconcile the number. First, “give or take” is doing real work: the figure is approximate, delivered on stage rather than filed with a regulator or signed by an auditor. Second, the value Ardoino attached to it — more than $11.5 billion — implies a per-coin price near current spot levels. At the $77,019 level where Bitcoin traded on Binance on November 3, 150,000 coins are worth about $11.55 billion, matching the executive’s claim almost exactly.
What the September 30 Attestation Shows
The document to measure the keynote against is Tether’s Q3 2026 attestation, prepared by BDO under the ISAE 3000R standard and published October 30. It is a point-in-time snapshot of Tether International’s figures as of September 30, not a running ledger, and its headline numbers were covered in our earlier breakdown of the reserve buffer.
Management asserted total assets of $191.45 billion against $183.50 billion in liabilities, leaving excess reserves of $7.95 billion — nearly double the $4.1 billion reported at the end of June. Direct and indirect U.S. Treasury bill holdings totaled $132.4 billion, including repurchase agreements, and the reserve report also listed about $19.1 billion in physical gold alongside the $8.37 billion of directly held Bitcoin. Quarterly net operating profit held at $1.5 billion.
“Generating $1.5 billion in net operating profit while maintaining nearly $8.0 billion in excess reserves gives us a strong foundation for that work,” Ardoino said in the release. “Our responsibility is to make sure USD₮ remains dependable when people need it most, including when markets and financial systems come under pressure.”
The 50,000 BTC Gap and the Policy Behind It
The arithmetic between the two disclosures is straightforward. Dividing the attestation’s $8.37 billion Bitcoin figure by BDO’s $83,621.23 September 30 valuation gives about 100,100 coins. Ardoino’s November 3 figure is about 150,000. The gap is on the order of 50,000 BTC — worth roughly $3.9 billion to $4.2 billion at the $77,000 to $83,600 range where Bitcoin has traded over the past month.
If the gap represents genuine purchases since September 30, Tether would have accelerated its accumulation sharply: it added about $2.6 billion of Bitcoin across the entire third quarter, when the position grew from an estimated $5.8 billion at the end of June to $8.37 billion at the end of September. The policy that produces those buys has been in place since May 2023, when Tether began directing up to 15% of its quarterly net operating profit into Bitcoin. The size of the program shows in the history: on December 31, 2025, Tether picked up 8,888 BTC in a single buy valued at approximately $780 million.
The alternative explanation is definitional. Tether’s reserve report counts “directly held” Bitcoin, while a chief executive speaking loosely may include coins held across the company’s mining arm, its investment vehicles, or other corners of the Independence Stack. Either reading is consistent with a materially larger Bitcoin position than the one itemized on September 30, but only the narrower one is audited.
Where a 150,000 BTC Position Ranks
Strategy, the Nasdaq-listed treasury company, disclosed in a November 2 Form 8-K that it held 849,327 BTC, acquired at an average cost of $75,451 per coin for a total of roughly $64.08 billion. Tether’s stated 150,000 coins would be about 17.7% of that total — second among companies that publicly disclose Bitcoin on their balance sheets, and ahead of every public mining firm, exchange and asset manager that reports a reserve. The comparison is not exact: Strategy exists almost entirely to hold Bitcoin, while for Tether the position is a fraction of a $191 billion reserve base.
The closest analogue in Ethereum terms is BitMine’s $14.5 billion treasury, which disclosed on November 2 that it had accumulated 6.06 million ETH, about 4.9% of the network’s supply. Both stories illustrate the same trend: non-exchange companies are converting operating profits into large single-asset treasury positions, and the second and third ranks are being rewritten in the process.
What the Figure Still Leaves Unverified
Three things remain unsettled. Tether has not published a wallet list or on-chain proof tying the “give or take 150,000” figure to specific addresses, so the number rests on the chief executive’s word rather than verifiable data. The September 30 attestation is signed, but it does not itemize a coin count — only a dollar value at a single day’s price. And the valuation swings with the market: the same 150,000 coins were worth about $12.5 billion at the September 30 price and about $11.55 billion at the November 3 price.
The structural counterweight is real. Because the purchases come from profit rather than the reserve assets that back USDT, a Bitcoin drawdown hits Tether’s earnings cushion first, and the $7.95 billion excess-reserve buffer — which grew by $3.8 billion in the third quarter — absorbs losses before they touch the tokens in circulation. A flat quarter of profit still produced a near-doubling of that cushion, precisely the scenario Tether’s management says it is built for.
The next observable checkpoint is the fourth-quarter attestation, expected around late January 2027. If the Bitcoin line item in that report lands near the $11.5 billion Ardoino cited rather than the $8.37 billion of the third quarter, the accelerated-accumulation reading would be confirmed. Until then, the precise size of Tether’s Bitcoin treasury is a claim made on stage, corroborated in part by a signed balance sheet, and not yet settled on-chain.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
