Tether CEO says company now holds about 150,000 Bitcoin
Tether, the company behind the world's most widely used stablecoin, now owns about 150,000 Bitcoin. CEO Paolo Ardoino says the stack is worth more than $11.5 billion.The disclosure came during his keynote at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano on November 3, 2026. It marks a steep jump from the figures Tether reported only months earlier, and it pushes the company further into territory usually occupied by corporate treasuries built entirely around Bitcoin.Earlier in 2026, Tether's disclosures put its Bitcoin holdings somewhere between 96,000 and 100,000 BTC. Getting to roughly 150,000 means adding tens of thousands of coins in a single calendar year.The dollar figures tell a similar story. Tether's Q3 attestation valued its Bitcoin reserves at $8.37 billion as of September 30, up from an estimated $5.8 billion at the end of Q2 2026.Tether has been buying since May 2023, when it adopted a policy of directing up to 15% of its quarterly net profits into Bitcoin.Some of those purchases have been large enough to stand out on their own. On December 31, 2025, Tether picked up 8,888 BTC, a buy valued at approximately $780 million at the time.Bitcoin is only one slice of Tether's reserves. The bulk of what backs its USDT stablecoin sits in US government debt.According to the company's Q3 2026 attestation, Tether holds about $132.4 billion in US Treasury securities, a figure that includes repurchase agreements.The same attestation showed excess reserves of $7.95 billion. That figure nearly doubled from Q2, and it represents the cushion Tether holds beyond what it needs to cover the tokens in circulation.Tether's reach is expanding alongside its reserves. The company says its global user base now exceeds 730 million, with around 30 million new wallets added each quarter.It remains privately held. Giancarlo Devasini owns roughly 45%, while Ardoino holds about 20%.A stablecoin issuer holding a volatile asset invites obvious scrutiny. Bitcoin can swing hard in either direction, and the value of Tether's stack will move with it.The structure of the program limits that exposure in one important way. Because purchases come from profits rather than from the reserves backing USDT, a Bitcoin drawdown would hit Tether's earnings cushion instead of the dollars that support each token, at least under the policy as described.The excess reserves add another layer of protection. A buffer of $7.95 billion gives the company room to absorb a sharp price drop before anyone needs to worry about the peg.That puts Tether in an unusual position. It is both a key piece of crypto's trading plumbing and one of the largest corporate holders of the asset that plumbing is built to trade.The 15% profit allocation has run since May 2023, and the jump from the 96,000 to 100,000 range to roughly 150,000 suggests the program accelerated rather than slowed this year.