Stablecoin firm Tether minted 4B USDT in 4 weeks: Data

Major stablecoin issuer Tether has been increasingly minting new USDT (USDT $1.00) tokens, issuing 4 billion USDT over the past month.

Tether issued another 1 billion of Tether on the Tron blockchain on Nov. 10, blockchain data provider Whale Alert reported. The latest USDT minting came just a few days after Tether issued another 1 billion USDT on Ethereum on Nov. 9, in addition to 2 billion USDT issued in two batches on the Tron blockchain on Nov. 3 and Oct. 19, according to Whale Alert data.

Tether chief technology officer and new CEO Paolo Ardoino commented on Whale Alert data on X (formerly Twitter), noting the latest 1-billion-USDT transaction on the Tron network was a “USDT inventory replenish.” He wrote:

Note this is an authorized but not issued transaction, meaning that this amount will be used as inventory for next period issuance requests and chain swaps.

The recently issued USDT makes up a significant share of the total USDT issued this year. Based on Whale Alert data, Tether should have minted 22.75 billion USDT in 2023, with 13 billion, or 57%, having been issued on the Tron blockchain. The remaining amount of 9.75 billion USDT was issued on the Ethereum blockchain.

Tether market capitalization over the past year. Source: CoinGecko

Tether has been actively minting new USDT stablecoins over the past year. In March 2023, Tether minted a whopping 9 billion USDT coins, in addition to the 3 billion minted over the previous month, according to Whale Alert data. The stablecoin issuer also minted a significant amount of USDT in mid-summer, issuing 3.75 billion USDT between June 12 and July 12.

While actively minting new stablecoins, Tether has also been burning some coins. On Aug. 22, Tether burned 1.2 billion USDT on the Tron blockchain. Previously, the stablecoin firm also burned 3.1 billion Tron USDT in June and 2 billion Ethereum USDT in February, according to Whale Alert.

The cryptocurrency community has quickly reacted to the most recent USDT minting transactions. One crypto enthusiast took to X to share some observations about how previous aggressive Tether USDT minting affected the market.

“Last time this much Tether got printed in a week a whole bank blew up,” the poster noticed, referring to banks like Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate and Signature Bank shutting down operations in March 2023.

In the aftermath of the bank implosions, some industry observers alleged exposure between Tether and Signature. Tether subsequently denied such allegations, “unequivocally re-iterating” that it had no exposure to Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

In addition to the active minting of new coins, Tether has been working to integrate a major ecosystem component recently, according to Ardoino. Tether’s CEO took to Twitter to announce that the firm is preparing to announce five new projects in 2024. “Couple of these could obliterate some popular Web2 centralized services for good,” he noted.

Tether did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.