Tether Holds About 150,000 BTC, CEO Ardoino Says

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company owns roughly 150,000 BTC. He made the remark in his keynote at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano, held Oct. 23⁠–⁠24; coverage appeared on Nov. 2. The figure comes from Ardoino himself, and there is no independent confirmation yet, such as wallet addresses or an auditor's report.

Details

According to ZeroHedge's account, Ardoino said the company holds "give or take 150,000 Bitcoin." He also claimed more than 730 million users worldwide and about 30 million new wallets per quarter. ChainCatcher reports the same figure and adds numbers from Tether's Q3 2026 attestation: about $122.8B in U.S. Treasury bills held directly ($132.4B including repo) and about $7.95B in excess reserves. Those figures come from Tether's report, not from the speech.

Ardoino also outlined the Independence Stack: energy and bitcoin mining, peer-to-peer communications, self-custody wallets and on-device AI. He said the open-source technology should keep running even if Tether no longer exists. Crypto Briefing's write-up of the keynote cites $1.5B net operating profit for Q3 and nearly $8B in excess reserves, but does not mention the BTC stash. The original report is Wu Blockchain's post.

What it means for the market

If accurate, 150,000 BTC is a sizeable position for a stablecoin issuer, but for now it rests on the CEO's word alone. The sources cite no report or wallet addresses from Tether confirming it.

For the live bitcoin price, see the daily brief; the stablecoin has its own page: Tether.