Tether (USDT) Prints New Coins as Treasury Runs Out of Funds

Circulating Supply and Treasury Status

The circulating supply of USDT has grown to 2.86 billion coins, with 3.12 billion in total.

The Tether treasury wallet was almost emptied out, falling to 57 million coins, before the new printing raised the stores to more than 273 million. Now, USDT coins have proliferated again, with a circulating supply of more than 2.8 billion, up from under 2 billion coins just a few months ago. The influence of USDT is seen as one of the chief drivers of Bitcoin (BTC) price movements. As of Friday, more than 71% of all BTC trades were in the pairing with USDT.

New USDT Minting Process

For the new series of USDT minting, Tether has changed the address for issuing “Grant Property Tokens”. The new minting wallet was set up this April 24, and immediately launched a tranche of 300 million additional tokens.

Those tokens reached the Treasury wallet, and were then distributed to a handful of exchanges. Curiously, Bitfinex has been wiped out from the Rich List, leaving Binance, Huobi and OKEx at the top, with continued inflows of USDT almost every day.

Exchange Holdings and Activity

Binance remains the biggest holder of USDT, with more than 809 million tokens. Huobi is increasing its supply fast, exceeding 300 million tokens just in the past two days.

Despite the increased supply, each USDT token goes through the trading ecosystem on an average of 5.7 times in 24 hours, for an extremely active turnover. This shows that the Tether ecosystem may see additional printing, as demand for stablecoin trading is extremely high. Currently Paxos Standard (PAX), a coin with a widespread representation, is also seeing a turnover of above 190%, with a sudden burst in activity.

Market Reactions and Price Anomalies

On Friday, the prices of all coins fell across the board, with BTC retreating from the peaks above $5,600 and down to the $5,200 range. This also arrived with a price anomaly for stablecoins. While USDT fell toward 99 cents, TrueUSD (TUSD) and USD Coin (USDC) rose toward $1.02.

On Kraken, the price of USDT has fallen toward $0.97 due to selling pressures. The rise in alternative stablecoins may be an attempt to cash out, as those assets allow for real cash withdrawals. In the case of USDT, it became clear that at least part of the supply was backed by credit and not assets in a bank.