Stablecoins in focus – Tether USDT’s latest minting play and what it means

• USDT mints have totalled $16 billion since Bitcoin’s $74k peak
• Whale activity increases as Bitcoin and USD liquidities move in correlation 

Tether Treasury minted 1 billion USDT on Ethereum and sent 183.2 million USDT to Cumberland for exchange deposits within the last 13 hours. This, according to SpotOnChain’s observation on X.

Since the crypto market’s crash on 5 August, Cumberland has received 953 million USDT from Tether and injected 906.7 million USDT into various exchanges. These include the likes of Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, Binance, and Bullish.com.

Source: SpotOnChain

Additionally, Tether ($USDt) has been integrated on TON blockchain, pushing USDT’s market cap to an all-time high of $115.6 billion.

Adding Tether’s $1 billion mints for today, at the time of press, totalled to $16 billion since Bitcoin’s $74k peak.

As big financial players prepare to enter the market, they could drive prices higher using this liquidity. This new Tether development is a sign of increased whale activity on centralised exchanges due to seamless transactions.

The sustained minting also coincides with recent market surges, supported by secure and efficient infrastructure like MPC wallets providers, custodians, and RPC solutions. Simply put, it all translates to greater activity on centralized exchanges.

Hence, there is reason to expect that these mints and transfers are set to drive the crypto market’s momentum.

Source: TradingView

A hike in whale activities 

Following the minting and transfer activities though, Whale “0xbe6” withdrew 935.1 WBTC ($55.6M) from Binance at an average price of $59,451.

Similarly, a few hours later, another Whale “bc1qr” withdrew 1,500 BTC ($89.1M) from Bitfinex at price of $59,393.

These significant transactions by these two prominent whales were identified by data from SpotOnChain.

Source: SpotOnChain

Bitcoin and USD liquidity rhymes

Additionally, it’s worth noting that Bitcoin and USD liquidity typically move together. However, ETF flows pushed BTC higher this year, despite low USD liquidity.

On the contrary, now, USD liquidity is increasing on the charts. This could boost risky assets as the trend continues due to USDT’s minting.

Source: TradingView

This renewed rhythm between BTC and USD liquidity is likely to impact USDT. Especially since it has recently been released in larger amounts to centralized exchanges.