Another billion Tether (USDT) has been minted, managing to keep up the pace of the bull market. In the past five weeks, Tether minted a total of $21B in USDT tokens, with most mints on the Ethereum network.
Tether (USDT) expanded its supply once again and is on track to go above 140B tokens. The latest mint arrives at a time when Bitcoin (BTC) still held above $100,000, but its rally had stalled for a few days.
Another 1B USDT token was created on the Ethereum network and immediately sent to the Tether treasury. The Treasury is also the source of tokens sent to exchanges, which boosts available liquidity. Not all mints are immediately sent to markets or other wallets, but market rallies often follow new USDT mints.
While minting and affecting the overall crypto market, Tether, Inc. also aims to position itself as a fintech-adjacent company. USDT is spreading to multiple payment apps that use different native versions. The biggest partnership comes from Stripe, which now allows USDT deposits for Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, India, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Togo, and Vietnam. Emerging markets are also becoming one of the drivers of stablecoin adoption.
Tether mints bring short-term BTC rallies
The period of active minting coincides with BTC price recoveries, as mints usually happen when the price rally stalls. Following the latest series of mints, BTC traded at $101,604.93.
The Tether Treasury wallet can take up to 24 hours to inject the next 1B tokens into the market. The latest mint was split between exchanges, including Binance, Kraken, and Bitfinex. The latest mint is not yet moving. The Treasury holds a remainder of 615M USDT, ready to be deployed to exchanges.
The new USDT on the market also moves through market makers Cumberland and Abraxis. Wintermute has also boosted USDT activity on Binance, as the exchange has absorbed significant deposits.
The rapid series of mints once again raised questions about the sustainability of the BTC rally. However, the active turnover of all available USDT suggests there is not nearly enough USDT to sustain the current trading volumes. Some of the available USDT is also locked in liquidity pools or in staking, or held in personal wallets.
USDT grows its influence on crypto trading with high daily turnover
After the latest mint, Ethereum carries 79.86B USDT, while TRON remains with 61.85B. The remainder is spread across smaller networks, including Solana, Aptos, TON, and others. In total, 139.74B USDT has entered the market, with a daily turnover volume of $177B. The recent USDT inflows have their effect amplified through high-volume trading.
With the latest series of mints, Ethereum remains the undoubted leader in carrying stablecoins. After the latest mints, the Tether token contract burned more than 7.17% of Ethereum gas. USDT was also the fastest-expanding stablecoin in the past month, adding more than 12% to its supply. The latest mints show a pivot from TRON-based USDT into a much bigger influence and activity levels for the Ethereum version.
Even with the increased supply, all USDT had a turnover of more than 126%, far surpassing the activity of USDC. Only about 26% of the supply of USDC is traded each day, despite the wide representation of the token. The overall boost to stablecoins also means USDC is becoming more active. While its mints are still slower, a recent transaction moved 1B USDC to an unknown address, revealing the scale of whale liquidity available on the market.
The growing supply of USDT coincided with another trend – the phasing out of First Digital USD. FDUSD decreased its supply to just $1.7B, while retaining its relatively high turnover. The activity of FDUSD boosted BTC above $60,000 and contributed to the latest rally above $100,000. However, the most recent market effects may be due to the added ERC-20 USDT tokens. Currently, FDUSD trades 470% of its supply each day, with most activity concentrated on Binance.
Stablecoins have grown their influence as a payment tool, going beyond their role for short-term rallies. After the latest mints, the total supply of stablecoins is now above 194.8B. Stablecoins use more than 28.8M daily active addresses, with activity ranging from microtransactions to whale-sized token movements.
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