Opinion: Tether and USDC Reserve Structures Are Closer to High-Risk Hedge Funds

BlockBeats news, on May 20, Christoph Hock, Head of Digital Assets and Tokenization at the German asset management giant Union Investment, stated at the Digital Money Summit 2026 in London that USDT and USDC are not "stablecoins" in the true sense; their reserve structures are closer to those of high-risk hedge funds.

Hock pointed out that Tether's reserves hold a large amount of gold and Bitcoin assets, making it not a purely USD-pegged low-risk cash equivalent. He believes that this structure transmits market volatility risks to corporate finances and institutional investors.

He specifically mentioned that USDC had experienced a 13% de-pegging incident in the past, and said that for corporate treasury departments and asset management institutions relying on stablecoins for overnight cash settlement, such price fluctuations represent "catastrophic risks."

Hock stated that institutional investors cannot tolerate substantial losses in the market value of cash positions within a short time, and criticized that some stablecoins have deviated from the original intention of "fiat-pegged digital cash." Data shows that as of January 2026, Tether's gold reserves totaled about 148 tons, valued at approximately $23 billion, which exceeds the gold reserves of some sovereign nations.

With European regulators continuously strengthening the review of unauthorized stablecoins, the transparency of stablecoin reserves and liquidity risk have become core topics of interest for traditional financial institutions.