Fiat-Backed Stablecoins: Reserves, Redemption, and Reports

The class in one paragraph

A fiat-backed stablecoin holds a reserve of conventional money assets. It issues tokens against the reserve. The issuer promises redemption. Return a token. Receive a unit of the underlying currency. The promise is a set of published documents. A fee schedule. A legal entity standing behind both. That is the whole design. Every part of it can be read.

The old page said every token is backed by an equivalent amount of fiat. The verified version is more complicated. It is also more useful. The reserve is a portfolio. Bills. Bonds. Repos. Cash. The composition is the content. The examination reports publish it line by line. The token pages in this library carry those lines with their dates.

The redemption pull

The peg holds through two linked mechanisms. In normal markets, arbitrage keeps the price near target. A token trading under a dollar gets bought. It gets redeemed at a dollar. The spread is the arbitrageur’s profit. When demand falls, the issuer sells reserve assets and buys tokens back. Supply contracts.

The issuer-direct path has published terms. The terms differ. Tether’s channel works at a 100,000 dollar minimum. Its fees are stated. Circle’s path runs through a Circle Mint account. The tiers are published. Those mechanics sit, dated and sourced, on the USDT and USDC token pages. One practical lesson belongs here. The redemption path is where the promise becomes a procedure. The procedure has a price list.

The majors, multi-chain

Two corrections to 2023 vintage copy anchor this section. First: USDC is not built on Ethereum alone. The issuer’s developer docs carry a mainnet address table. 37 rows across 37 networks, read 11 September 2026 ^[2]. USDT runs natively on multiple networks too. The issuer’s own protocols page carries the list. Multi-chain issuance is the current state of the class. Copy that says otherwise has not been re-read.

A second correction rides the exemplar list. The old page named BUSD as a Binance product. It was issued by Paxos under a brand license. Paxos states the rest on its own page. It no longer mints new BUSD. Redemption into dollars stays open. Conversion to USDP stays open ^[1]. Issuer identity and mint status are exactly the facts a class page must keep current.

The reports layer

Every fiat-backed token in this library carries recurring third-party assurance at a stated tier. The issuer commissions the reports. Each is scoped to a stated assertion. A firm signs each, having examined what the scope named. An attestation is not a financial statement audit. The difference is taught in full on the attestations page inside the stablecoins pillar.

The tier names come from the reports themselves. Reasonable assurance. Examination. Limited assurance. Variant forms below. The two majors sit at the top of that range today. Figures publish monthly at one. Quarterly at the other. The taxonomy is one transferable skill. The other is the habit of reading the scope paragraph before the headline number. The stablecoins hub carries both.

Who else issues

Beyond the majors, the verified fiat-backed set here includes PYUSD. Paxos N.A. issues it, under the PayPal brand, with monthly KPMG examinations. USD1 sits beside it. BitGo Bank & Trust N.A. issues that one, with monthly reports listed on an issuer index. Each carries a token page with the report figures. The class is wider than two names. It is narrower than the marketing copy suggests. Every issuer named here has a document trail. Or it is not named.

The 2023 vintage named smaller issuers too. Two of its rows survive with corrections. Gemini issues GUSD. That token carried a documented secondary-price stress reading during the March 2023 bank-run window. This library’s depeg records hold it, feed named. Paxos Trust Company issues the Pax Dollar, USDP. That is the token the BUSD path converts into ^[1]. The old page named these tokens without issuer verification. This one names them with it. Three years of document-gathering makes that difference.

What the class is not

A fiat-backed token is not a bank deposit. The difference is structural. Deposits carry deposit insurance. Tokens do not. One issuer carries a disclosed captive insurance layer on its own balance sheet. The token pages carry each issuer’s insurance disclosures where they exist. This class’s risk profile is reserve risk plus redemption mechanics. The crypto-backed page carries the other collateral class’s different profile.

What a report date means

Every figure in this class comes with dates. The dates are not decoration. A report date is the day the reserve snapshot was taken. A publication date is the day the report was signed and released. The two can sit weeks apart. Both matter. The snapshot speaks for its moment. The signature speaks for the work. The majors’ reports carry dual report dates inside single documents. That is the clearest possible demonstration that these numbers move inside a month.

The reading habit is simple. Any page, this one included, names a reserve figure. Look for the date. No date, the figure is a slogan. Date there, the figure is a fact. Facts can be re-checked.

Where this page sits

The stablecoin intro maps all four classes. This page is the fiat branch. The stablecoins hub is the pillar root. The cryptocurrency hub is this page’s home root. Token pages carry every figure this page summarizes. Each figure has its source and date. This page links them. It does not re-derive them.