What is a reserve attestation?
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 5 min
In short
An attestation is a report in which an outside accounting firm confirms that an issuer held a stated amount of reserves at a given moment. It is narrower than an audit: it verifies a balance on a date, not the business as a whole. Read one by checking the date, the asset breakdown and who signed it.
Key points
- A third-party confirmation of reserves held at a specific moment
- Narrower in scope than a full audit of the company
- Read it for the as-of date, the asset breakdown and the signatory
- Frequency and granularity differ from issuer to issuer
Definition
A published report in which an independent accounting firm confirms the balance and composition of an issuer's reserves as of a stated point in time.
Most attestations confirm one thing: that total reserves at the reporting date were at least equal to tokens outstanding. The firm reconciles issuer records with bank and custodian confirmations and states a conclusion limited to that scope. It does not opine on ongoing internal controls.
So nothing in the report tells you how assets moved before or after that date. How much detail is given about composition, maturities and which institutions hold the money depends entirely on the issuer's disclosure practice — and more detail means more for a reader to judge.
Three practical steps when reading one. Check the as-of date, so you know which moment is described. Read the breakdown to see the split between cash, short-term government paper and everything else. Then look at the signing firm and the scope it accepts. Only after that can you say the issuer's claims have been checked.
Watch out for
- · An attestation does not guarantee that future redemptions will be honoured
- · 'Audited' and 'attested' cover different scopes — do not treat them as the same
- · If an issuer has stopped publishing, treat the gap itself as information