​A stablecoin attestation report tells you three things: how much is in circulation, what backs it, and who certified the count. To read one properly, find the issuance figure, match it to total reserve assets, then break the reserve pool into cash, Treasury bills, repos, and any non-cash assets. Cross-check the auditor, the standard applied (usually AICPA for US firms or ISAE 3000 for international), and the as-of date. Anything older than the cadence the issuer claims is a red flag.
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An attestation is not a full financial audit. An attestation is a point-in-time assurance that a specific number (usually reserves on a chosen date) matches the criteria stated by the issuer. A financial audit covers the going-concern of the entire entity. Most stablecoin issuers publish attestations monthly or quarterly. A full audit, if produced, is annual.
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That distinction is the first line to find in any report. The cover usually says "Independent Accountant's Report" (attestation) or "Independent Auditor's Report" (audit). The wording is deliberate.
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Every credible attestation surfaces the same five datapoints. If any is missing or buried, treat it as a yellow flag.

Circle publishes a monthly attestation prepared by Grant Thornton LLP under AICPA attestation standards. The reports run roughly five pages and follow a tight template.
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On page one, find the date and the comparison: USDC in circulation against USD-denominated reserve assets. The reserve total must equal or exceed circulation. Page two lists composition: cash at regulated US financial institutions plus shares of the Circle Reserve Fund (USDXX). USDXX is an SEC-registered 2a-7 government money market fund , meaning it holds short-dated US Treasuries and overnight US Treasury repurchase agreements with major banks.
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The footnotes are worth reading. Grant Thornton notes the procedures performed and the responsibilities of Circle management for preparing the schedule. A reader should look for any language about exceptions, scope limitations, or subsequent events. A clean report has none.
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Tether's reserve disclosures come from BDO under the ISAE 3000 (Revised) standard, quarterly. The Q1 2026 report (March 31, 2026) lists total reserves of US$191.77 billion against liabilities of US$183.54 billion, giving an excess buffer of roughly US$8.23 billion.
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Composition that quarter: approximately US$117 billion in Treasury bills, US$19.3 billion in overnight reverse repurchase agreements, US$4.7 billion in term reverse repos, roughly US$8 billion in gold, roughly US$7 billion in bitcoin, plus secured loans, corporate bonds, and other investments. The Treasury bill figure alone is more than the federal debt holdings of most sovereign reserve managers.
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Two things to look for when reading Tether's report. First, the gold and bitcoin lines: they are NOT cash equivalents and they will mark to market. Second, the language at the top , BDO concludes the figures are "fairly presented" under the criteria, which is the standard ISAE 3000 verb. It is an assurance opinion, not a full audit conclusion.
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Paxos issues stablecoins under a New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) trust charter. Reserve reports are published monthly. [VERIFY: latest auditor of record on the Paxos monthly attestation.] The reports follow a similar template , circulating tokens, reserve assets, composition , but carry the additional weight of NYDFS supervisory requirements, including the trust-charter segregation rules that put reserves in bankruptcy-remote custody on behalf of token holders.
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Reading one report is the easy part. The point is to compare consistently across issuers. Apply the same four-question filter to each one.

An attestation snapshots reserves on one date. It does not tell you about intra-period reserve quality, redemption volumes, or whether the issuer can hold the peg through a stress event. It does not cover the issuer's operational solvency, related-party exposures off the reserve pool, or the legal claim a token holder has on the assets in a bankruptcy. Those questions get answered by the broader financial audit (if one exists), the issuer's legal disclosures, and the regulator-mandated risk reporting in the jurisdiction of issuance.
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A token holder relying on an attestation alone is reading the highlights, not the book.
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Three benchmarks. Circle: monthly. Tether: quarterly. Paxos: monthly under NYDFS. Any issuer below that cadence , quarterly when the comparables are monthly, or only-on-request , is signaling that disclosure is not a competitive priority for them. The MAS framework in Singapore and the HKMA framework in Hong Kong both formalize the monthly cadence as a licensure requirement. The market is moving toward monthly as the floor.
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Format descriptions are drawn from the public attestation reports themselves: Circle's transparency page (circle.com/transparency), Tether's Q1 2026 BDO report, and the Paxos monthly reserve reports. Standards cited (AICPA, ISAE 3000) are the actual professional frameworks named in the cover pages of each report.
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