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Tether’s first audit lands with an asterisk: AICPA standards, not PCAOB, and no mention of PwC’s readiness work that FT reported months ago, suggesting the “clean opinion” answers less than the marketing implies.
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In Today’s Email:
**What Matters:Tether Completes First Full Audit 👀Founders Highlight:Mike Cagney of Figure 👨Deal Flows:**River Markets Raises $8.5M Seed Round 💰️
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WHAT MATTERS
**State of play: **KPMG’s unqualified opinion on Tether International’s 2025 financials marks a shift from periodic attestations to full audited disclosure, arriving five years after the reserve transparency settlements that first put the company under regulatory scrutiny.
KPMG US issued an unqualified “clean” opinion on Tether International’s full 2025 financial statements, covering the balance sheet, income statement, equity changes, and cash flows.
The audit found Tether’s reserves exceeded liabilities by $6.8B as of December 31, 2025, according to new CFO Simon McWilliams.
KPMG physically inspected every gold bar in Tether’s reserves rather than relying on custodian reports, the company said.
Tether had promised a full audit since 2017, when an earlier attempt with Friedman LLP ended without completion.
The Financial Times previously reported PwC was hired to prepare Tether’s internal systems for audit, but Tether’s announcement did not mention PwC’s role.
**Why it matters: **A full audit, rather than a point-in-time attestation, is the transparency standard regulators and institutional counterparties have demanded from Tether for years.
Our take: One clean opinion doesn’t erase a decade of stonewalling, and the AICPA standard used here is not the same as a US GAAP or PCAOB audit banks and public companies face.
**For builders and investors: **Watch whether this audit becomes annual and whether other stablecoin issuers face pressure to match it, particularly as US stablecoin legislation matures.
BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT
**Intro: **Mike Cagney is the Co-Founder of Figure, a company transforming capital markets at the intersection of blockchain and AI.
Previous background: Before founding Figure, Mike spent decades in finance, from derivatives trading at Wells Fargo to co-founding Finaplex and Cabezon Investment Group. His most notable venture was SoFi.
**The big idea: **Mike through Figure wants to completely rebuild the infrastructure of global capital markets by using blockchain to replace trust with truth.
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INSIGHTS
Figure’s near-tripling of net income arrives as the company leans into vertical integration rather than pure marketplace growth, with the pending Kiavi acquisition signaling a bet that owning adjacent asset classes matters more than scaling the existing loan marketplace alone.
Net income rose 192% year-over-year to $87M, while net revenue more than doubled to $226M.
Consumer Loan Marketplace volume reached $4.3B, up 132%, including $2.8B routed through Figure Connect.
Figure added over 100 new loan-origination partners during the quarter, with weekly applications surpassing $1B as of July.
The $717M Kiavi acquisition remains on track to close in the second half of 2026, expanding Figure into real estate lending.
Figure expanded into SMB lending in May through a partnership with Credibly.
DEAL FLOWS
*Deal flows slowed down this week - we saw $65M+ in deals 💼 *
River Markets emerges to solve a fragmentation problem institutions are only now discovering, as prediction market volume scales faster than the infrastructure needed to trade across venues without moving prices or managing separate order books.
River Markets raised $8.5M in a seed round led by Haun Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Coinbase Ventures, and Qube Research Technologies.
Founders Oscar Levy and Antonin Parrot built the platform after their own weekend trading software generated seven-figure profits across fragmented prediction market venues.
Kalshi reported institutional trading volume grew 800% over six months as of May, alongside block trades from hedge funds hedging real-world exposures.
Levy said River Markets is on track to exceed hundreds of millions of dollars in annualized trading volume by year-end.
The capital will fund engineering hires, faster trading infrastructure, and expansion of sales and operations teams.
Deal flows in the past week:
River Markets, $8.5M Seed Round
Vangrid, $9M Seed Round
Memebook, $1M Seed Round
JPYC, $38M Series B-1 Round
KiiChain, $1M Public Token Sale
Entravel Group, $7.5M Funding Round
QUICK BITES
Gemini sharesslideafter $108M loss.TethersaysKPMG issued ‘clean’ opinion in first full audit.Bullishposts$280M Q2 net loss as digital asset sales fall 44%.Mirae Assetto injectadditional $35M into Korbit crypto exchange.Bitwisemullstokenizing its Solana staking ETF via Superstate partnership.Figurenearly triplesquarterly profits as loan marketplace vol surges to $4.3B.South KoreasentencesDelio CEO to 15 years in prison for $50M crypto fraud.Washington courtordersKalshi to halt most prediction market offerings in state.
NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME
Rain’s𝕏readon The Anatomy of a Stablecoin Card Swipe.Blockworks’𝕏readon the Mechanics of Onchain Tranching.
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