MacroSnaps16 September 2026
No. 67A crypto company now lends more money to the US government than Germany does.
Norway
$203bn
sovereign fund
Saudi Arabia
$142bn
oil surplus
Tether
$141bn
stablecoin issuer
South Korea
$135bn
central bank reserves
Germany
$91bn
central bank reserves
Holdings of US Treasury securities, latest reported. Tether's $141bn is from its Q1 2026 attestation, which puts it 17th on the list; the countries are from US Treasury international capital data. Japan (about $1.2 trillion), the UK (about $900bn) and China (about $700bn) are far above this range.
Why this is happening
- A stablecoin is a digital token that promises to be worth one dollar. To keep that promise the issuer has to hold a dollar of something safe for every token, and the safest, most liquid thing available is short-term US government debt.
- So the more people use digital dollars, the more Treasuries get bought, automatically, by a private company answering to nobody in particular. Tether alone reported more than $10bn of net profit for 2025, almost all of it interest earned on other people's money.
- The use is real, not just trading. Stablecoins settled roughly $28 trillion of adjusted transaction volume in 2025, more than Visa's payment volume, much of it people in Argentina, Turkey, Nigeria and Lebanon holding dollars their own banking systems cannot give them.
The take
This is dollarisation running on someone else's network. Anyone with a phone can now hold dollars without an American bank, an American visa or their own government's permission, and every time they do, someone buys another Treasury bill. It extends the dollar's reach and it also means a run on a private token is now, mechanically, a forced sale of US government debt.