Tether completes its first full KPMG-audit

Every week Amdax summarizes what is happening in the crypto market for you. Want to know more? Click through the links in this article for more depth.

Market update

Three steps to get you up to speed:

1. Bitcoin's volatility hits a low. Bitcoin is trading around 64,000 dollars and has been moving within a narrow range for weeks. What stands out is not the price, but the volatility underneath. Realised volatility sits at one of its lowest levels ever, on par with 2023. For the fifth time in history, bitcoin is moving less than the Nasdaq, when it is usually the other way around. Trading volumes are dropping too: last week the spot market averaged 1.63 billion dollars a day, more than a quarter less than a month earlier. The broader altcoin market looks equally quiet, with ether around 1,900 dollars and few outliers up or down.

2. Washington sits down with the crypto sector. Today the top executives of the major crypto firms and exchanges gather at the White House, together with SEC chair Paul Atkins and CFTC chair Mike Selig. Trump is expected to join. Tomorrow is the first meeting of the CFTC's new Innovation Advisory Committee, with crypto rules and prediction markets on the agenda. The trigger is political: the Senate went into summer recess without voting on the CLARITY Act. At moments like these the market usually holds back. Sometimes the price runs up in hope beforehand, then slides after the disappointment. Around the CLARITY Act it feels more like resignation, after months of delay without a decision.

3. Tether completes its first full audit. Tether, issuer of the largest stablecoin with roughly 180 billion dollars in tokens outstanding, announced on Thursday that KPMG has completed a full audit of its 2025 annual accounts, with an unqualified opinion. There is also criticism, and it has merit. Above all, Tether is showing that its reserves were sufficient on a single date in the past. Part of that sits in gold, whose value moves closely with the market. At the end of 2025, reserves were 6.8 billion dollars above liabilities and 4.1 billion dollars halfway through 2026. How well its processes would cope in every scenario remains an open question, particularly as the report itself never went public.

Tim's take

Silence in the market is rarely just silence. Bitcoin's volatility is at one of the lowest levels ever seen, and this has happened before. In the summer of 2023, just after a bear market, volatility crept just as close to zero, followed by a move higher. In the autumn of 2018, halfway through a bear market, the same compression preceded a sharp decline. The same setup, two opposite outcomes. Low volatility is therefore no directional signal, but it does show that the market expects little. What we see alongside it: funding rates are barely positive and open interest in futures is not growing meaningfully. Underneath, there does not appear to be leverage building up that could put the market on edge.