- Tether Treasury recently minted nearly half a billion new USDT coins, at the same time as BTC price surged.
- Many were quick to accuse the project of price manipulation, but Tether once again revealed other reasons.
- The funds, supposedly minted to replenish TRON’s USDT supply, ended up on numerous major exchanges.
Recently, PayPal announced that it will soon introduce crypto buying and selling as part of its platform, which caused a large BTC surge that finally allowed the coin to go beyond $12k. Not only that, but BTC also nearly reached $13.2k, before seeing a correction that took it back down to the $12.7k level. This massive surge also resulted in almost half a billion USDT being minted.
Tether mints massive USDT amount after BTC price surge
According to recent data, the Tether Treasury recently minted about half a billion new USDT coins, 185 million of which ended up distributed to various exchanges in the last day and a half.
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A well-known blockchain tracker, Whale Alert, also noticed and reported two major transactions that took place on October 20th (150 million USDT) and October 21st (300 million USDT). The first amount was printed only a few hours before PayPal announced that it will add crypto support. In other words, that one came just before Bitcoin’s price surged.
With Tether’s controversial history, many immediately started claiming that the project is once again engaging in market manipulation. However, the company’s CTO, Paolo Adoino, identified both transactions as simple inventory replenishes for the TRON network.
Where did the funds go?
With USDT minting often accompanying large BTC price changes over the years, it is not surprising that so many have questioned them. However, it could be argued that the Treasury is simply responding to demand.
After the project minted 150 million USDT yesterday, there were as many as 15 massive transactions that went from the Treasury, carrying a total of 185.9 million coins. They ended up reaching numerous addresses, some of which belonged to major exchanges like Huobi and Bitfinex. A few even reached unknown addresses. However, the large majority of the funds (around 126.9 million, or 70% of the funds) ended up on Binance.
At the moment, the Treasury’s wallet holds only around 280 million, as the last transaction took place only an hour after the second round of minting was over.
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