Over the past month or so, Tether has been printing more USDT than ever before – taking its market cap up to a whopping $3.9 billion. As Bitcoin has been coming back to life, more and more traders are looking to close positions into USDT, meaning Tether needs to keep on printing to keep up with the demand. However, this fresh batch of USDT included a decimal error that meant $5 billion USDT tokens were produced. Whale Alert then reported the $5 billion minting, with Tether detecting and correcting the problem in a matter of minutes. This resulted in some rather Tether-esque market manipulation.
While Tether did in fact print $5 billion USDT tokens, the decimal error was quickly picked up by Tether and burning commenced within 4 minutes. However, before fact checking to ensure Tether was fixing the issue, Whale Alert proceeded to Tweet the erroneous $5 billion USDT minting. The full burn took around 30 minutes to complete, at which Time Whale Alert then reported the burning of the excess tokens.
Causing Bitcoin to Spike
As Whale Alert broke the news of $5 billion in USDT tokens being minted, the Bitcoin price began to rally. Bitcoin was up a little more than 5% in the moments following the news from Whale Alert, but Justin Sun was quick to point out the mistake. Sun jumped in as the newly minted $50 million in USDT tokens were heading for the Tron Network to be distributed by Tron Tether. As soon as the news broke that the new USDT supply was in fact only $50 million and it was going to Tron, Bitcoin began to consolidate significantly.
50 million #USDT transfer from Omni to #TRON. Please check the total issuance here: https://t.co/AM8cK07PAh
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) July 13, 2019
More Tether Means More Uncertainty
Investors all around the globe have been taking profits off the table and moving it into Tether, waiting for the pullback below $10,000. This means that there is an increased demand for Tether and that more Tether needs to be printed. On the first weekend in July, we saw $100 million USDT tokens freshly minted with $150 million in USDT printed just 2 weeks before. This new huge influx of USDT in the markets can only mean one thing – uncertainty. Stablecoins like USDT are used as a hedge against volatility, so the more USDT in circulation, the more uncertain investors currently are.
Bitfinex Finally Out of Debt with Tether
It’s without a shadow of a doubt that Bitfinex and Tether have the sketchiest relationship of any two entities in the crypto world, but the pair are finally one step closer to parting ways. Last week, Bitfinex paid off the remaining $100 million in owed Tether. At the start of the year, Bitfinex borrowed a huge sum of cash from Tether to remain afloat and continue operating after its banking partner had its accounts shut down. Courts ruled the partnership and financial lending questionable and asked the two to part ways. Bitfinex hit back saying it would negatively impact customers, but now the duo look like they’re heading their own ways.
More and more Tether is hitting the crypto world every week, meaning we’re staring down the barrel of more uncertainty and volatility. If traders play their cards right, there should be a lot of cash to be made from trading the swings.
