Tether, the issuer of the USDT dollar-pegged coin, is running the money printer again, increasing the supply to 4.088 billion USDT. After Bitcoin (BTC) price once again threatened to drop below $10,000, a USDT liquidity injection may boost prices.
NEW USDT ENTERS MARKETS
Tether once again grew the supply of USDT, after testing the waters with recent coin burns. But after BTC prices responded with significant drops, bots noticed new USDT hitting the markets. New coins came out of the minting wallet, and the Tether treasury moved funds into circulation.
The latest printing intervention made USDT the sixth biggest digital coin by market capitalization, with a daily turnover exceeding that of BTC. The latest USDT printings are happening both on the Omni layer, and the Ethereum network. In the future, more USDT will migrate as Ethereum tokens. ETH-based USDT has now grown to 1.63 billion, almost double since the start of 2019. Major exchanges are switching their USDT wallets to only operate with the new type of asset.
CRYPTO YUAN ARRIVES ON BITFINEX
But these new USDT printings seem routine, compared to another move that may shake the crypto markets. Bitfinex immediately launched trading pairs for the brand-new Chinese yuan stablecoin. The asset, intended to capture trading demand from China, is an Ethereum-based token. There are only 20 million CNHt tokens minted as of September 11, 2019.
Verified users will be able to make a direct switch between the Chinese yuan and CNHt, the newly minted asset. Bitfinex also limits certain jurisdictions from using the direct exchange. In theory, Tether, Inc. is launching an asset that could bypass Chinese capital controls, and Bitfinex is helping the process.
Tether also managed to create a digital yuan-denominated coin, even before the People’s Bank of China unrolled its long-awaited government-backed crypto coin.
Bitfinex has also slowly grown its influence, first by removing the $10,000 minimum deposit requirement, to attract a larger number of small-scale investors. The exchange also offers various tiers of verification, to gain access to assets or services.
But despite their expansion, Bitfinex and Tether, Inc. are still facing troubles. The New York Attorney General has extended its investigation, with the potential to discover multiple faults. Both companies showed evidence of working with New York-based clients, despite not qualifying for BitLicense, the local business license for crypto-related services.