Tether Mints $1B USDT, $538M Moves Into Exchanges as Market Eyes Relief

The cryptocurrency market has witnessed an overall downtrend in the past week. Many of the top ten coins have seen double-digit losses in the past seven days, while Bitcoin is currently struggling to hold above $62,000.

The market correction has largely been linked to escalating conflict in the Middle East, which has also had a similar impact on traditional financial assets. However, relief may be on the way for the crypto sector, as evidenced by the significant movement of stablecoins.

Tether Mints $1B USDT

The creation of new stablecoins represents one of the easiest ways to measure investor appetite for crypto assets. The reason is not far-fetched. Stablecoins act as a rail for investors to move money into the market, and the creation of new units indicates that investors are keen to buy assets or use the funds within the DeFi space.

In the hours before press time, leading stablecoin issuer Tether minted 1 billion USDT on the Tron network. The new issuance brought the total supply of Tethers to over $108 billion, representing a new all-time high market cap for the widely used stablecoin.

https://t.co/zC8xz9p0Ud

CC @whale_alert

PSA: 1B USDt inventory replenish on Tron Network. Note this is an authorized but not issued transaction, meaning that this amount will be used as inventory for next period issuance requests and chain swaps.

— Paolo Ardoino 🍐 (@paoloardoino) April 16, 2024

As CoinMarketCap data shows, the latest mint also means that Tether has added over $3.5 billion to its market cap in April alone. At the start of April, the stablecoin’s market cap stood at around $104.45 billion.

(Source: CoinMarketCap)

Data Shows $538M Inflow Into Exchanges

Looking beyond Tether’s new issuance, another indicator pointing to a market recovery is the large inflow of stablecoins into exchanges. Within the past 24 hours, Binance and Coinbase saw noticeably large inflows from whale investors.

Precisely, an unknown entity deposited $151 million in USDC to Coinbase in two separate transactions, while another entity deposited $462 million to Binance. These large transfers may be an attempt by big players to capitalize on the market decline, indicating that interest in the crypto space is still well alive and healthy despite the recent correction.

Evidently, only time will reveal how quickly the increased demand will help prices recover. However, the early signs suggest that a relief may be on the horizon.