USDT Depeg History and How to Read Tether's Reserve Reports: Price Deviations From 2017 to 2023, Reserve Mix and Attestations

USDT is the largest US dollar stablecoin, and on exchanges it is usually treated as worth US$1. But it has fallen below US$1 in the past, a few times by a lot. This article lists USDT’s depegs by date, each with price data and reporting from the time, then explains how to read Tether’s reserve reports, how an attestation differs from an audit, and where to find this material.

The short version: on Coin Metrics daily prices, all 124 days when USDT was below US$0.99 fell between 2017 and 2019, when Tether had lost its banking relationships and was under investigation by the New York Attorney General. Since 2020, the lowest daily price has been 0.9950 (12 March 2020). During the Terra collapse and the FTX failure in 2022 and the Curve pool imbalance in 2023, intraday prices briefly fell to between US$0.94 and US$0.997, but daily prices stayed at 0.995 or above. Tether’s quarterly report is an attestation for a single day, and on 30 June 2026 about a quarter of its assets were ones whose value moves, such as gold, secured loans and bitcoin. Its 2025 financial statements were audited by KPMG in August 2026, the first such audit.

This article is a summary of information and not investment advice. It does not predict USDT’s price or whether it will depeg again. Historical prices and reserve figures are labelled with their dates and sources (checked on 16 October 2026) and may change. Go by Tether’s latest published reports.

Before talking about a USDT depeg: intraday price vs daily price

The USDT price for the same day can look very different depending on the data you use:

• Intraday price: the trade price at one exchange at one moment. An illiquid exchange or a few minutes of panic can produce a very low price, and news headlines often use this number.
• Daily price: a data provider combines prices from many exchanges into one figure per day. This article uses PriceUSD from the Coin Metrics Community API, a reference price taken at the end of each UTC day, which is much milder than the intraday low.

So “USDT fell to US$0.85” and “USDT closed the day at US$0.95” can both be true. The record below lists both. Intraday prices come with reporting from the time; daily prices are what I compiled on 16 October 2026 from Coin Metrics data (1 January 2017 to 15 October 2026, 3,575 days).

USDT depeg history: 2017 to 2023

Sources are in the sections below.

2017 to 2019: lost banking relationships and the New York investigation

These three years saw USDT’s largest and longest deviations. On Coin Metrics daily prices, USDT was below US$0.99 on 34 days in 2017, 64 days in 2018 and 26 days in 2019, 124 days in total.

• April 2017: On 5 April 2017 Bitfinex and Tether sued Wells Fargo, saying it had blocked four Taiwanese banks from sending US dollars out for Bitfinex. They dropped the suit about a week later (CoinDesk). In April and May, the daily price was below US$0.99 on 33 days, with a low of 0.9232. The data has a 0.8493 reading on 7 May, but the days on either side were both above 0.98 and trading volume was small at the time, so I do not treat it as a reliable low.
• 15 October 2018: USDT fell to US$0.85 intraday on Kraken and to about US$0.96 on Binance, because the market doubted Bitfinex’s finances and banking relationships (Bloomberg). The daily price that day was 0.9548 and did not return to 0.99 or above until 30 October.
• November 2018: The daily price fell to 0.9503 on 14 November, lower than in October, and from 19 to 26 November it was mostly between 0.96 and 0.97. I could not find a single clear cause for this period, so I will not speculate.
• April 2019: On 25 April the New York Attorney General announced a court order against Bitfinex and Tether (New York Attorney General), and the daily price fell to 0.9702 on 28 April. The timing overlaps, but the causal link is my own inference.

Later official investigations confirmed the doubts of the time. On 23 February 2021 the New York Attorney General settled with Bitfinex and Tether for a US$18.5 million penalty, finding that Tether had no banking access anywhere in the world from mid-2017 at the latest and that for some periods the USDT in circulation was not backed one-to-one by US dollar reserves (New York Attorney General). On 15 October 2021 the US CFTC imposed a US$41 million fine, stating that over a 26-month sample period from 2016 to 2018, Tether held enough fiat reserves on only 27.6% of days, contrary to its claim of being “100% backed by fiat” (CFTC). For more on this part of Bitfinex’s history, see “Bitfinex Review”.

2022: the Terra collapse and the FTX failure

• 12 May 2022: After the TerraUSD collapse, USDT fell to about US$0.95 on some exchanges, with more than US$3 billion flowing out in a single day, and was back at US$1 the next day (CNBC, CNBC). Tether said it had processed US$10 billion of redemptions since 11 May (Fortune). The daily low was 0.9954 on 11 May. When Celsius and Three Arrows Capital ran into trouble that June, the daily low was 0.9985 on 18 June.
• 10 November 2022: During the FTX collapse, USDT briefly fell to US$0.938 intraday on Kraken as traders rushed to redeem about US$700 million of USDT. Tether’s position was that it had not depegged: the low prices came from a data problem in the API connection between CoinGecko and a few exchanges, and prices on Binance, Bitfinex and Coinbase were all within 10 basis points (0.1%) of US$1 (Kitco). The daily price that day was 0.9974. For how FTX users’ claims were handled afterwards, see “What happens when a crypto exchange goes bankrupt”.

June 2023: the Curve 3pool imbalance

On 15 June 2023, USDT’s share of the 3pool on the decentralized exchange Curve (three stablecoins, USDT, USDC and DAI, ideally 33.33% each) rose above 70%, meaning many people were selling USDT into the pool. USDT fell to about US$0.997, and Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino said the company was “ready to redeem any amount” (The Block). The daily price that day was 0.9991.

Daily price statistics since 2020

Putting together the daily prices from 1 January 2020 to 15 October 2026:

• Not a single day was below US$0.99, and only 4 days were below 0.997: 1 January 2020 (0.9963), 4 February (0.9965), 12 March (0.9950) and 11 May 2022 (0.9954).
• Since June 2023 the low has been 0.9977, on 4 February 2026.
• Deviations can go upward too: on 13 March 2020 the daily price was 1.0102, above US$1.

This is a historical record and does not mean USDT will not depeg again. For a comparison with USDC’s March 2023 depeg, see “USDT vs USDC”.

How Tether’s reserve mix has changed: from commercial paper to Treasury bills, gold and bitcoin

When reading a reserve report, current figures are easier to understand if you know what happened before. Some key dates:

The table shows two things. After 2022, high-risk commercial paper was replaced by Treasury bills. But the secured loans Tether said at the end of 2022 it would bring to zero still stood at about US$13.45 billion on 30 June 2026, and its gold and bitcoin positions were larger than in 2023. The value of these assets moves with the market, and they are the part to watch most closely when you read a current report.

How an attestation differs from an audit

Tether’s quarterly reports are often called “audit reports”, but in form they are attestations:

ISAE 3000 (Revised) is a standard of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB). Its full name is Assurance Engagements Other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information (IAASB), and the name alone tells you it is a different kind of work from a financial statement audit. Tether’s press release also says the Q2 2026 attestation confirms the accuracy of “Tether’s financial figures and reserves report” (Tether press release).

When you actually read the reports, the difference comes down to this:

• An attestation looks at one day: it will not tell you how assets moved around the report date or whether there was a shortfall mid-quarter. The CFTC’s 2021 action looked precisely at whether reserves were sufficient on “every day”.
• An audit covers a full year’s financial statements: the KPMG audit opinion was published by Tether, and according to Tether’s press release, reserves exceeded liabilities by US$6.814 billion on 31 December 2025. I could not find the full text of the KPMG report in public, so I can only cite Tether’s announcement.
• Neither means “everything can be cashed out at any time”: the reports do not say at what price gold, secured loans and bitcoin could be turned into US dollars under stress. Exchange proof of reserves has the same limitation; see “How to check proof of reserves”.

How to read Tether’s quarterly reserve report

Taking the 30 June 2026 report as an example (Tether’s 31 July press release and transparency page, checked on 12 October 2026):

Look at these things in order:

1. Line up the report date: the date of the report is the report date (for example 30 June 2026); the press release date is the release date (31 July). Use report dates when comparing with the previous quarter.
2. Work out the excess ratio: excess reserves divided by liabilities. On 31 March 2026 excess reserves were US$8.23 billion (Tether press release); by 30 June they were down to US$4.11 billion, roughly halved in one quarter.
3. Split the assets into two groups: cash and cash equivalents in one, the other assets whose value moves in the other. My calculation: the US$4.11 billion excess is about 8.7% of the second group’s US$47.1 billion, so under the simplifying assumption that liabilities stay the same, a combined fall of about 8.7% in the second group would wipe out the excess. This is a sensitivity calculation, not a forecast.
4. Check how secured loans changed: Tether’s transparency page notes that the secured loans were not made to affiliated entities; the Q2 2026 press release says secured loans fell by about US$2.38 billion (about 15%) during the quarter.
5. Check the issuer and the standard: confirm it was issued by BDO under ISAE 3000 (Revised), and that you downloaded the file from Tether’s official website.
6. Keep daily figures and quarterly reports apart: the total assets and liabilities updated daily on the transparency page (on 12 October 2026 showing total assets of about US$189.72 billion and liabilities of about US$184.25 billion) are Tether’s own figures and have not been attested by an accountant.

For a line-by-line comparison with USDC’s reserves, see “USDT vs USDC”.

Where to find Tether’s reserve reports and USDT price data

The report date of Tether’s next quarterly report is 30 September 2026. Going by past release timing, it is usually published about a month after the quarter ends; when I checked Tether’s news page on 16 October 2026 it had not yet appeared.

What I watch for after reading the record and the reports

Below is how I check this material when I read it. It is not buy or sell advice:

• When a news story gives a depeg price, first check which exchange it was and whether it is an intraday or daily price. Kraken’s 0.938 in November 2022 and Tether’s “major exchanges were all within 0.1%” refer to different things.
• When each quarterly report comes out, look at the excess reserves and the share of second-group assets. A sharp drop in the excess, a rising share for the second group or a report released later than usual are all changes worth looking into further.
• Putting USDT on an exchange or into a yield product stacks the risks: on top of the issuer’s risk there is the platform’s own risk. For a comparison of the different options, see “Where to park idle USD and USDT”; for the history of exchange failures, see “Centralized exchange incident timeline”.

Every depeg so far has had one thing in common: when the market doubts whether the reserves are really there and can be paid out right away, the price falls first, and it comes back once the issuer redeems or regulators and reports provide an answer. What a report can answer is “what was there on the report date”, so each new quarterly report is worth reading again against the previous quarter’s.

FAQ

How many times has USDT depegged?

On Coin Metrics daily prices, from 2017 to 15 October 2026 USDT was below US$0.99 on 124 days, concentrated in April to May 2017, October to November 2018 and April to May 2019. Since 2020 the lowest daily price was 0.9950 on 12 March 2020; intraday prices dipped briefly below US$1 in May 2022, November 2022 and June 2023.

What was USDT's worst depeg?

On 15 October 2018 USDT fell to US$0.85 intraday on Kraken while trading around US$0.96 on Binance, as the market doubted Bitfinex's finances and banking relationships. The Coin Metrics daily price that day was 0.9548, and it went lower on 14 November 2018, to 0.9503.

Who prepares Tether's reserve reports?

The quarterly reserve reports are issued by the accounting firm BDO as attestations under ISAE 3000 (Revised). Tether announced on 18 August 2022 that BDO Italia would take over from Moore Cayman (later renamed MHA Cayman). Separately, KPMG U.S. audited the 2025 financial statements, which Tether published on 13 August 2026.

What is the difference between an attestation and an audit?

Tether's quarterly attestation verifies the assets, liabilities and reserve breakdown on a single day; a financial statement audit covers the financial statements for a whole fiscal year. An attestation does not vouch for how assets are used after the report date, and for years Tether had only attestations, until it published its first annual audit result in August 2026.

What is in Tether's reserves?

According to the 30 June 2026 report, total assets were about US$187.75 billion. About 75% was cash and cash equivalents such as Treasury bills and reverse repos; the rest was gold at about 10%, secured loans at about 7.2%, bitcoin at about 3.1%, and other investments, equities and so on. Total assets exceeded liabilities by about US$4.11 billion, about 2.24%.

Where can I find Tether's reserve reports?

Download each quarter's attestation PDF from the Reports tab of the transparency page on Tether's website; when a report is released, Tether's news page also carries a summary press release. The total assets and liabilities updated daily on the transparency page are Tether's own figures and have not been attested by an accountant.