Reserve Attestation
A third-party report verifying a stablecoin issuer actually holds the reserves it claims — trust, but verified.
A reserve attestation is a report, typically from an accounting firm, confirming that a stablecoin issuer holds reserves matching its tokens in circulation at a point in time. It became standard practice after years of skepticism about whether issuers were truly backed 1:1.
An attestation is weaker than a full audit — it verifies balances on a given date rather than exhaustively examining controls and risks — but it’s far better than nothing, and 2026’s GENIUS Act now mandates monthly reserve disclosure for US issuers. When evaluating a stablecoin, recent, detailed attestations from a reputable firm are a baseline requirement; their absence is a reason for caution regardless of the coin’s size.