- Tether CEO Ardoino criticizes the S&P downgrade, calling it based on outdated models and incomplete data.
- He emphasizes USDT’s strong asset base, profits, equity, and ongoing critical role in crypto markets.
- Ardoino highlights Tether’s reserves, earnings, and $500M monthly yield from U.S. Treasury bonds.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has strongly responded to S&P Global’s latest report, criticizing the ratings agency for downgrading USDt based on what Ardoino termed “outdated legacy models” and incomplete data. Ardoino said that S&P Global failed to factor in vital fund details that demonstrate Tether is far stronger than the downgrade indicated.
In Ardoino’s view, S&P failed to factor in several “material considerations” such as Tether’s total asset base, Tether’s total profit amount, and the total amount of equity within the Tether group of companies. In total, Ardoino believes that it is evident that “the value that supports USDt is well in excess of what is commonly thought.”
He further highlighted that USDt continues to play a very important role in the global crypto markets for every exchange and individual. Being used constantly for the process of payment and conversion of currencies, any negative review, whether accurate or inaccurate in this case, can create some concern.
S&P Downgrades USDT, Tether Responds
S&P Global issued this downgrade on “peg-stability” on November 26, when S&P Global lowered the peg-stability level of USDT from 4 (“constrained”) to 5 (“weak”); this is the lowest level in S&P Global’s ranking of 1-5. Tether has increased its exposure in “high-risk” assets such as “Bitcoin, gold, corporate bonds, private loans, and other investments.”
Note that this is only the second downgrade for USDT since March 2025 and comes despite USDT having the strongest possible history of keeping the peg despite several industry shocks. Analysts were immediately concerned about this downgrade and indicated that this may go on to further cloud confidence in this stablecoin that supports billions of liquidity in this industry every day.
Ardoino rejected S&P’s analysis, saying that it failed to factor in Tether’s actual strength in the financial domain. He highlighted that in Q3 of 2025, Tether had excess equity of $7 billion, additional reserves of around $184.5 billion, retained earnings of $23 billion, and another secondary buffer of reserves of $7 billion.
Ardoino further observed that the organization failed to factor in Tether’s core income-generating aspect, which is the yield on U.S. Treasury bonds. In light of the large amount of short-term bonds that it holds, it is evident that Tether makes about $500 million monthly, and this amount keeps rising as it invests more reserves in those bonds.
He also added that in the S&P report, it had failed to look at the nature of Tether Group itself, as it is a multi-division operation that earns money from different arms.
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Tether Reserve Debate Intensifies Again
The delisting has reopened several debates about Tether’s reserves and whether the corporation may be over-exposed to such non-traditional markets as gold or bitcoin.
Some points made about this are that the founder of BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, believes Tether may be building exposure to each of the assets. Also, Hayes goes on to say that if gold or Bitcoin were to decline dramatically, for instance by 30%, Tether may face problems in terms of absorbing such declines.
However, some other experts countered this theory. Joseph Ayoub, a former senior digital asset analyst at Citi, explained that he has personally analyzed Tether’s books in considerable depth and that, in his view, Tether is in much better financial shape than many critics give it credit for.
Ayoub drew attention to the fact that Tether holds more in reserves than it owes out, and that many areas of Tether’s balance sheets are not accurately captured in ledgers or in descriptions of them that are released to the public. Ayoub further observed that Tether accrues billions of dollars in interest income each year and yet employs only eight people.
Ayoub further added that, in his opinion, Tether is better capitalized than most of the world’s banks.
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