Tether Passes Its First Full Audit, Keeps the Statements Private

Hello, Defiers!

• Tether clears its first full audit in 12 years and publishes none of it
• Neutrl pauses minting and redemptions while it assesses its reserves
• ether.fi adds tokenized stocks, fiat rails and Aave-backed borrowing to its app
• Tempo launches embedded stablecoin yield for platforms, starting with Deel
• SharpLink plans a $200M ETH allocation to Lido's wstETH

Read more below!

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WATCH

How Robinhood Chain Hit 200M Transactions in 30 Days

Robinhood Chain went from zero to 200 million transactions in its first month. Seong Lee, who runs product for Robinhood Crypto, walks Chris Storaker through what's driving the activity, why its permissionless stock tokens can be redeemed even if Robinhood disappears, and where the yield in its insured DeFi lending product comes from.

CEFI

Tether Clears First Full Audit From KPMG Without Publishing the Statements

Tether said KPMG US issued an unqualified opinion on the 2025 accounts of Tether International, S.A. de C.V., its El Salvador issuing entity — the first full financial-statement audit in the company's history. The work was performed to AICPA standards; the GENIUS Act sets PCAOB standards for licensed US issuers. Tether has released neither the statements nor the opinion letter.

Tether Clears First Full Audit From KPMG Without Publishing the StatementsTether said Thursday that KPMG U.S. issued an unqualified opinion on the financial statements of Tether International, S.A. de C.V. for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025, completing the first full financial statement audit in the company's history.thedefiant.io

Why this matters: A full audit was the longest-running demand on Tether. Meeting it on softer standards with the documents withheld moves the question from whether an audit exists to what it shows.

DEFI

Neutrl Pauses Minting and Redemptions While Assessing Reserve Impact

Neutrl paused minting, redemptions and related functions while it assesses what it called circumstances affecting reserves, and Strata froze its Neutrl-market contracts, whose two tranche tokens showed more than $1.7 million in onchain value. The protocol has published neither a loss figure nor a timeline.

Why this matters: A reserves-driven pause with no stated loss is how several DeFi unwinds have started. The tranche structure spreads any hole across two tokens the moment it lands.

DEFI

ether.fi Adds Tokenized Stocks, New Fiat Rails And Aave-Backed Borrowing

ether.fi added tokenized stock trading, portfolio-wide borrowing and global fiat rails to its app a week after pulling restaking out of weETH, and introduced programmatic ETHFI buybacks funded from every revenue line. The dedicated Aave instance behind the credit line is still in governance.

Why this matters: The product sprint shows where ether.fi thinks the business is after EigenLayer: a consumer finance app on staked collateral, with buybacks tying revenue to the token.

TRADFI AND FINTECH

Tempo Launches Embedded Yield Product for Platforms, Starting With Deel

Tempo launched Tempo Earn, which lets fintechs pay users rewards on idle stablecoin balances and keep part of the return, with payroll platform Deel as the first named deployment at up to 4% APY. Rewards route through Morpho vaults and tokenized money market funds, placing the payment outside the stablecoin issuer that US law bars from paying interest.

Why this matters: The structure pays stablecoin holders yield without the issuer touching it — the exact arrangement banks pressed senators to shut down in the CLARITY fight last week.

DEFI

SharpLink Plans $200 Million ETH Allocation to Lido's wstETH

SharpLink plans to stake $200 million of ETH through Lido for wstETH, adding a DeFi-compatible token to its treasury staking mix — about 106,000 ETH at current prices, roughly 12% of its reported holdings.

Why this matters: One of the largest corporate ETH treasuries is choosing liquid staking over plain validators, putting nine figures of ETH into a token it can deploy across DeFi.

Other Stories Worth Your Time

Robinhood Private-Market Fund Prices $200 Million IPO — the closed-end fund priced 8 million shares at $25 and expects NYSE trading under RVII to begin Aug. 13, charging a 2% base fee plus 20% of realized gains for exposure to Y Combinator-ecosystem startups.

Standard Chartered Says Its $100 UNI Target May Be Too Low After Robinhood Chain Burns — Geoff Kendrick said UNI burns funded by Robinhood Chain trading have run at an annualized $90 million since Jul. 27, with DefiLlama data putting Uniswap's protocol revenue at 2.4 times its prior level.

Norway Wealth Fund Discloses $81.9 Million BitMine Stake — the sovereign wealth fund reported 6.15 million BitMine shares worth $81.9 million at June 30, indirect exposure to the largest corporate ETH treasury through a listed stock.

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