CoinShares Debunks Tether Collapse Fears After Hayes Warning
CoinShares head of analysis James Butterfill has dismissed insolvency considerations surrounding Tether following warnings from BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes, who claimed a 30% drop within the stablecoin issuer’s Bitcoin and gold holdings might wipe out its fairness.
Butterfill’s December 5 market replace affirmed that Tether maintains over $181 billion in complete reserves in opposition to roughly $174.45 billion in liabilities, leaving a surplus of roughly $6.78 billion.
The dismissal comes as crypto markets navigate turbulence in Japanese authorities bonds and softer US employment knowledge that confirmed a -32,000 print versus forecasts of +10,000.
Hayes sparked controversy on November 30 by arguing Tether is “operating a large rate of interest commerce” that positions the corporate for Federal Reserve fee cuts whereas exposing it to harmful volatility by way of its $22.8 billion allocation to gold and Bitcoin.
Tether CEO Counters Insolvency Claims with Financial Data
CEO Paolo Ardoino swiftly refuted Hayes’s evaluation with detailed disclosures displaying Tether Group’s complete belongings attain roughly $215 billion.
The government defined that the corporate holds roughly $7 billion in extra fairness on prime of its stablecoin reserves, plus one other $23 billion in retained earnings as a part of Tether Group fairness.
Bitcoin and gold symbolize simply 12.6% of complete reserves, with over 70% held in short-term U.S. Treasuries.
“S&P made the identical mistake of not contemplating the extra Group Equity nor the ~$500M in month-to-month base income generated by U.S Treasury yields alone,” Ardoino acknowledged, suggesting critics are “both dangerous at math or have the inducement to push our rivals.“
re: Tether FUD
From newest attestation announcement (Q3 2025):
“Tether will proceed to take care of a multi-billion-dollar extra reserve buffer and an general proprietary Group fairness approaching $30 billion.”
Tether had (at finish of Q3 2025) ~7B in extra fairness (on prime of the…
— Paolo Ardoino
(@paoloardoino) November 30, 2025
The firm generated more than $10 billion in profit this 12 months from curiosity revenue on reserve belongings, making it one of the vital environment friendly cash-generating companies globally with simply 150 staff.
His protection adopted S&P Global’s November 26 downgrade of USDT’s peg-stability score from 4 to five, citing elevated publicity to “high-risk” belongings and “persistent gaps in disclosure.”
Ardoino responded defiantly, declaring, “We put on your loathing with delight,” whereas positioning Tether as “the primary overcapitalized firm within the monetary trade, with no poisonous reserves.”
The score motion carries profound implications underneath MiCA rules, which prohibit USDT from EU exchanges with a “5” score, probably shifting institutional liquidity towards rivals like Circle’s USDC.
Industry Veterans Challenge Hayes’s Fundamental Analysis
Joseph Ayoub, former head of digital asset analysis at Citi, noted Hayes neglected essential distinctions between Tether’s disclosed reserves and complete company holdings.
The analyst defined that Tether maintains a separate fairness steadiness sheet comprising mining operations and company reserves that aren’t publicly reported underneath the corporate’s “matching philosophy” for reserve disclosure.
“Tether isn’t going bancrupt, fairly the other; they personal a cash printing machine,” Ayoub concluded, pointing to the corporate’s roughly $120 billion in interest-yielding Treasuries producing roughly 4% returns since 2023.
Banks function on considerably decrease fractional reserves of 5-15% in liquid belongings in comparison with Tether’s overcollateralized construction. However, conventional establishments profit from central financial institution lender-of-last-resort help that Tether lacks.
Hunter Horsley, CEO of Bitwise Invest, characterized Tether’s construction as “higher than fractional banking reserves,” whereas CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju dismissed Hayes’s warning as motivated by buying and selling place administration.
Former FT Alphaville editor Izabella Kaminska offered a deeper structural evaluation, suggesting Tether’s thick fairness buffer and retained earnings mannequin creates “a capital construction that appears quite a bit just like the banking mannequin tutorial Anat Admati advocates: a lot thicker fairness buffers, far much less leverage, and minimal maturity mismatch.“
Kaminska famous that if Tether’s depositor base proves keen to redeem instantly in gold throughout stress conditions, the steel turns into “the pure last-resort funding asset for its shadow/gray exposures and a hard-asset substitute for the lender-of-last-resort help that banks get from central banks.”
Analysts are overlooking how stablecoins that retain earnings (aka Tether) are evolving into one thing structurally uncommon.
The actuality is, as Tether’s retained earnings accumulate, they function economically like a really thick fairness buffer — far past the capitalisation… https://t.co/KXtsrG52kU
— Izabella Kaminska (@izakaminska) November 30, 2025
This cross-border redemption channel operates with out dependence on synchronized regulatory frameworks.
The controversy emerges as Tether expands beyond stablecoin issuance into commodity trade lending, having deployed roughly $1.5 billion in credit score throughout oil, cotton, wheat, and agricultural markets.
The firm’s Q3 attestation confirmed USDT issuance elevated by greater than $17 billion through the quarter, lifting circulating provide above $174 billion, with October figures surpassing $183 billion.
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