$150 Million New USDT Tether Printed: What Does It Mean?

The most popular stablecoin issuer Tether has printed yet another $150M worth of USDT. The Chief Technical Officer at Bitfinex, which is associated with Tether, Paolo Ardoino, has weighed in, saying that the amount is authorized but not issued.

Tether On The Move Again: Prints $150M USDT

The issuer of the most popular stablecoin, Tether, has printed a fresh batch of $150 million worth of USDT. The cryptocurrency has been sent to Tether’s treasury account and all of the newly printed USDT is based on Ethereum’s blockchain.

Weighing in on the matter was Paolo Ardoino, the acting CTO at Bitfinex. He said that the amount is “authorized but not issued.” Providing further clarifications on the matter, Ardoino explained that the newly minted USDT “was created in the treasury wallet that will be used to fulfill future issuance requests.”

According to Tether’s official transparency page, the total amount of authorized on Ethereum’s network is $2,858,413.62 which is obviously far from the $150M newly printed USDT.

What Does it All Mean?

Naturally, a move of the kind sparks quite a lot of curiosity amid the cryptocurrency community, with most of the people thinking that there is some sort of a large price move incoming.

However, at this point, it’s rather premature to come to any conclusions based on the words of Bitfinex’s CTO. The amount of USDT which has been printed hasn’t hit the market yet and it’s questionable when and if it will do so.

Furthermore, there has been quite a bit of speculation on the printing of new USDT and sudden moves in the price of Bitcoin. One study which was published back in 2018 found out that purchases made with USDT were timed following market downturns and have resulted in “sizable” increases in the price of BTC.

Whether or not that’s the case, it’s definitely true that the controversy around Tether exists and it’s far from fading.

Most recently, the stablecoin issuer updated its terms silently, causing many to believe that it may not be 100% backed by fiat. In turn, the new terms state that:

Every tether is always 100% backed by our reserves, which include traditional currency and cash equivalents and, from time to time, may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities (collectively, “reserves”). Every tether is also 1-to-1 pegged to the dollar, so 1 USD₮ is always valued by Tether at 1 USD.

This article was first published on: Jun 11, 2019