Tether USDt price holds near dollar as freeze power is tested
Published on 10/31/2026 at 13:06 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWSUSDT stability meets operational scrutiny
- Tether USDt traded at 0.9989 USD when Investing.com was checked at 13:29:35 Berlin time.
- Tether froze nearly 1.57 billion USDt linked to a potential Binance security incident, according to Reuters.
- Tether reported 7.95 billion USD in excess reserves and 1.5 billion USD in third-quarter operating profit, according to figures reported by Cointelegraph.
The Tether USDt price remained close to its dollar target while the stablecoin issuer faced a fresh test of its intervention powers. Investing.com displayed USDT at 0.9989 USD at 13:29:35 Berlin time, with a 24-hour volume of 119.64 billion USD and a market capitalization of 180.25 billion USD. The page listed USDT as the third-ranked crypto asset and showed 180.51 billion tokens in circulation.
The quote was 0.11 percent below the 1.00 USD reference level. Investing.com also showed a 52-week range of 0.9943 to 1.0032 USD. Because the available quote page did not provide a verified prior UTC daily close, no daily percentage comparison is used here. For a stablecoin, the small deviation is better read as a peg indicator than as a conventional speculative price signal.
Freeze action after Binance incident
Reuters reported on October 29 that Tether froze nearly 1.57 billion USDt connected to a potential security incident at Binance. Circle froze more than 800 million USD Coin, bringing the stablecoin freezes reported by Reuters to more than 2.38 billion USD. Binance said its teams were reviewing the incident and that customer funds were safe, while withdrawals were being addressed.
The episode highlights a defining trade-off of USDT: the token can function as a liquid settlement asset across crypto markets, but the issuer can also restrict transfers from specific addresses. The reported action does not establish that all affected funds will be recovered, nor does it by itself indicate a change in the dollar peg. Reuters said Binance had described the issue as a potential security problem, while former Binance chief Changpeng Zhao said it looked like a hack.
Reserve cushion improves in Q3
A separate report by Cointelegraph, republished by LCX Crypto News, said Tether reported 1.5 billion USD in third-quarter operating profit. The report said excess reserves rose to 7.95 billion USD at the end of September from 4.1 billion USD at the end of June, while assets reached 191.5 billion USD against 183.5 billion USD in liabilities.
The report also said Tether held 132.4 billion USD in direct and indirect US Treasury bills and that its Bitcoin reserves were valued at 8.37 billion USD. Those figures may strengthen the reported reserve cushion, but they also show why USDT holders remain exposed to reserve composition, asset valuation and issuer governance rather than only to the token's intraday quote.
Tether is separately pursuing payment use cases. In an October 21 announcement, Tether said it led a pre-seed round in Bolivian fintech Peso to expand USDt payment infrastructure across Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina.
More dated developments and market context are available on the Tether USDt topic page.
