Tether Treasury Becomes Biggest USDT Holder

[Pegasus]

After days of drawing in the excess Tether (USDT), the treasury wallet has finally topped the rich list as the address with the largest holding. The other reason for the shift in balances was the reduction in USDT balances on the main wallet of Binance, which was until recently the biggest wallet, with more than 808 million coins.

The treasury wallet now holds 786,678,763 USDT after the latest transaction of 50 million coins. The Binance wallet shrank yesterday to about 682.6 million USDT. However, it turns out Binance has moved the coins to another wallet, which now contains 82 million USDT.

The loss of trust and persistent criticism have caused Tether to issue one of its rare tweets to defend its approach to issuing dollar-pegged assets:


Traditional systems take time to adapt to the pioneering work taking place in this space. https://t.co/ykapXrhEqJ

— Tether (@Tether_to) October 17, 2018
The substantial holdings in the Tether treasury also ensure that this portion of the total USDT supply will not be redeemed for dollars even if Tether had all the dollars to back each USDT. At the same time, Bitfinex has seen most USDT withdrawn, with just 13,311,801 coins remaining. Additionally, Bitfinex saw another 3,000 USDT leave its cold wallet.

The influence of Tether is still visible despite the lower circulation. More than 60% of all Bitcoin trading happens against the USDT, a possible signal of a sell-off or a return to Bitcoin. It remains to be seen if Tether can manage to remove the coins smoothly to prevent a more abrupt run.

On Kraken, the real price of USDT has stabilized around $0.95, while the general USDT price is 0.97, based on the Bitcoin price premium on Bitfinex. The premium hovers around $300, as tracked by a new service showing the USDT price risk. So far, the removed USDT have only partially helped to return the dollar peg of the USDT.

Tether trading pairs represent more than 21% of all crypto volumes. However, the presence of multiple exchanges makes the Bitcoin and altcoins ecosystem more resilient despite predictions that Bitfinex could be the source of a Mt. Gox-style event. The state of Tether and Bitfinex is closely watched by the crypto community.

Source