Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) has released an independent, third-party attestation of its bank account, and according to a top 5 public accounting firm, the stablecoin has its funds in order.
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The attestation was performed by Grant Thornton LLP, one of the largest accounting firms in the U.S. and is the first of what is to become a monthly occurrence for the stablecoin. In the report, which was conducted for the month of October and was signed on November 16, 2018, Grant Thornton found that Circle Internet Ltd. holds $127,412,240.89 in a custody account for USDC. This amount is enough (and then some) to cover the outstanding 127,408,827 USDC in circulation at the time of the attestation.
“In our opinion, the Reserve Account Information in the accompanying Reserve Account Report as of October 31, 2018 at 11:59 PM UTC is correctly stated, based on the criteria set forth in the Reserve Account Report, in all material respects,” the report reads.
Grant Thornton says in the write-up that the “examination was conducted in accordance with attestation standards established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.”
Notably, Grant Thornton’s examination is an attestation, not an audit. Though they resemble each other in function, the makeup of each has some subtle differences. An audit may be conducted to look at an entity’s financial status along with other non-financial factors (e.g., internal controls, security measures, general operations) to make sure that there aren’t any weak points in the entity’s operations and that it is complying with current laws and regulations.
An attestation, conversely, looks at compiled data and checks that data using an agreed-upon procedure. Bernard Gallagher offers a succinct distinction between the two on I.S. Partner’s website.
One of the things to keep in mind to
