According to a Tuesday post by Whale Alert, the account that tracks major cryptocurrency transfers, 100 million Tether (USDT) tokens were transferred on the Ethereum blockchain from Tether Treasury, the central wallet controlled by the stablecoin issuer, to the Bitfinex exchange.
The move has led to some speculation about a potential liquidity injection being performed by Tether.
A similar transfer of 127 million USDT took place last week on June 27. On June 25, 148 million USDT was sent to an unknown wallet.
A chain swap event
The most recent transaction was accompanied by 100 million USDT being sent from Bitfinex to Tether Treasury on the Tron blockchain.
Hence, the move recorded on Tuesday is most likely a chain swap, which involves transferring USDT from one blockchain to another. The Bitfinex exchange was acting as an intermediary.
During chain swap events, USDT on one blockchain is sent back to the treasury, meaning that it gets "burned." In this case, Bitfinex returned 100 million Tron-based USDT to the treasury before issuing 100 million Ethereum-based USDT to Bitfinex.
The move is likely meant to rebalance liquidity between the chains to meet more user demand on Ethereum.
Meanwhile, according to CryptoQuant, Tron's DeFi activity is growing at a fast pace, with liquidity "deepening fast."
Tether's minting spree
On June 22, Tether minted a total of 2 billion tokens at the Tether Treasury. Other major minting events took place on June 18.
According to the data provided by CoinGecko, the total market cap of USDT currently stands at $157 billion.
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team