Tether (USDT) Added Another 100M to Supply Amidst Bitfinex Controversy
Since the beginning of April, USDT in circulation added above 800 million coins, coinciding with potential locked funds from Bitfinex.
Since the beginning of April, USDT in circulation added above 800 million coins, coinciding with potential locked funds from Bitfinex.
Tether (USDT) continues to increase its supply, following a large-scale printing of 300 million coins last Thursday. Now, the Treasury wallet is once again filling up, and the USDT asset is moving around the exchange ecosystem.
Since the beginning of April, the circulating supply of USDT grew from roughly 2 billion coins to above 2.8 billion coins. The addition comes from coins released from the Treasury wallet, as well as the most recent printing.
The added supply arrives at a time when Bitfinex released a statement that some of the fiat funds may have been locked away with Crypto Capital. Bitfinex used the third-party payment supplier after having troubles with banking and securing its own bank accounts. The potential funds locked amount to as much as $850 million, a recent report by the New York Attorney General revealed.
After the news, traders are showing signs of attempting to move out of USDT positions. Currently, more than 83% of all Bitcoin (BTC) trades happen in the USDT pairs, which is near the record of 85% of all trades. In the past days, traders were noticed selling USDT to store their funds in the form of BTC.
https://twitter.com/TradeBlock/status/1121609420000190465
Traders shedding USDT refilled the wallets of Bitfinex and Poloniex on the Tether Rich List. Bitfinex, which had near-negligible amounts of USDT stored on its wallets, increased its holdings to above 21 million coins within days. As for Poloniex, the exchange refilled its USDT wallets, and a series of transactions saw the coins being sent back to the Treasury wallet. Over the weekend, Poloniex sent back two transactions of 5 million USDT and two transactions of 13 million USDT back into Treasury storage.
At the same time, Huobi is increasing its USDT storage, to as much as 375 million coins. Binance remains the largest USDT holder, although the exchange decreased its holdings in the past days. OKEx has also slightly increased its holdings.
USDT activity has fallen somewhat, with each coin turning over around the ecosystem just 3.7 times a day, down from more than 11 times a day recently during a BTC rally.