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Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.
GM!
Today’s top news:
Crypto majors continue slide, BTC at $62.8k
SEC delays meeting to discuss crypto regulation
Trezor data breach exposes customer addresses
Kalshi raising $750M at $40B valuation
Lighter debuts $20M+ points program with Robinhood Wallet
🏦 Tether Finally Got a Real Audit, and KPMG Signed Off
Tether said Thursday that Big Four accounting firm KPMG issued an unqualified opinion (the best possible result) on its 2025 financial statements.
Tether (the company behind the leading stablecoin USDT) called it the “largest inaugural financial audit in history,” and said KPMG examined its assets, liabilities, income, cash flows, internal systems, records, counterparties, and supporting documentation, even physically counting and inspecting every individual gold bar Tether holds rather than trusting custodian reports.
Tether has spent years fending off questions about whether USDT is truly backed. For most of its history, it published quarterly attestations (a lighter review), rather than submitting to a full audit, which critics treated as a red flag. And the skepticism wasn’t unfounded: Tether paid an $18.5 million settlement to New York in 2021 over misrepresenting its reserves, and the CFTC fined it $41 million the same year for claiming USDT was fully backed by dollars when it wasn’t at all times. A clean opinion from a Big Four firm is the milestone the company has long promised and never delivered, until now.
No rock was left unturned. Tether has all the gold it says it has. Now reviewed by KPMG.
How many financial institutions or governments can actually say that?
"As part of the process, KPMG physically counted and inspected every individual gold bar held by Tether, verifying the… https://t.co/sW3bmCQ6Tu
CEO Paolo Ardoino, unsurprisingly, took a victory lap, framing it as proof against “several years of detractors’ false claims, competitors’ lies, political attacks and misinformed coverage,” and arguing Tether’s governance has matured alongside its balance sheet.
The audit comes as Tether is pushing aggressively into the US market, launching a domestic stablecoin and courting regulators under the new GENIUS Act framework. A clean audit will help open even more doors in this new world. And that’s probably bad news for their competition. Circle built its whole pitch on being the transparent, regulated alternative to Tether - and that’s no longer the case. Tether is an absolute behemoth, reporting $1.5 billion in Q2 profit and holding more US Treasuries than most countries. And now people can actually trust the books…
🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets
Crypto majors are slightly red; BTC -1% at $62.8k; ETH -0.5% at $1,876; SOL -0.8% at $75.50; HYPE -2% at $56.40
Top alt movers include ethFi (+14%), ATOM (+10%) and CRO (+3%)
Oil +0.5% at $81.5; Gold -0.5% at $4,400
Stock futures are mixed after the S&P hit another new ATH; DOW -0.1%, Nasdaq +0.2%
Trezor customer data was exposedin a shipping-partner breach, after a hack leaked the names, phone numbers, email addresses, and home addresses of thousands of the hardware-wallet maker’s customers
Kalshi is in talks with Sequoia and Wellingtonfor a $750 million raise at a $40 billion valuation, confirming the blockbuster prediction-market round as the platform's revenue doubles to a $4 billion run rate
Figure's revenue doubledas its blockchain loan marketplace surged, with the tokenization lender posting $226 million in quarterly revenue (up 113%) and $87 million in net income as consumer-loan volume jumped 132% to $4.3 billion
Gemini reported a $107.7 million Q2 net loss, its fourth consecutive loss, as platform assets dropped 54% to $8.4 billion despite 37% revenue growth, while it leans on prediction markets and stock trading to diversify
