Tether possesses $1.5B worth of BTC in its reserves

BDO Italia’s most recent attestation report for Tether revealed that Bitcoin comprised approximately $1.5 billion, or approximately 2%, of the stablecoin issuer’s reserves at the end of the first quarter. In previous reports, the accounting firm did not include Bitcoin as a line item.

Precious metals received their own line item in the report, disclosing that Tether possesses approximately $3.4 billion worth of these assets, or roughly 4% of total reserves.

Tether stated in an accompanying announcement that it included information about its Bitcoin and precious metal holdings to increase transparency for USDT stablecoin holders:

“The CRR [Consolidated Reserves Report] provides for the first time, additional categories with the aim of increasing transparency into Tether’s reserves reporting. Physical gold, Overnight Repo, Corporate Bonds and Bitcoin ownership have been reported separately.”

The announcement also stated that Tether earned $1.48 billion in revenues during the first quarter and increased the token’s circulation by 20%. Due to this increase in circulation, Tether’s total reserves have attained an all-time peak of roughly $81.8 billion.

The decline of Tether’s largest competitor, Circle’s USD Coin, may have contributed to the recent development of Tether.

Concerns about USDC’s exposure to the failing Silicon Valley Bank led to a momentary depreciation on the secondary market in March.

The coin rapidly reclaimed its value, but its market capitalization has decreased since then.

Jeremy Allaire, chief executive officer of Circle, cited a purported regulatory assault in the United States as a contributing factor to crypto’s recent decline.