Major stablecoin issuer Tether has significantly increased its issuance of new USDT assets, reaching a total of $4 billion in the past month.
Whale Alert, sharing this information on its Telegram channel, disclosed that Tether had minted an additional $1 billion worth of USDT on the Tron blockchain on November 10. This occurrence is a recent example of the stablecoin maker’s growing printing exercises.
Reacting to the report, Tether’s chief technology officer (CTO) Paolo Ardoino stated that the $1 billion USDT is an inventory replenishment on the Tron blockchain.
Ardoino explained that the stated amount is authorized but not issued, meaning that it would be used as an inventory for the next period of issuance requests and chain swaps.
Prior to this, Tether minted $1 billion of USDT on the Ethereum blockchain on November 9. This was complemented by a notable issuance of an additional $2 billion in fiat-backed stablecoins in two tranches on the Tron network on November 3 and October 19, as revealed by Whale Alert.
These figures push Tether’s minting spree to a total of $4 billion in USDT in the past month. However, this does not represent the final target for the blockchain-based platform in terms of minted USDT tokens for the year.
According to data from Whale Alert, Tether is looking to print 22.75 billion USDT in 2023, with 13 billion (57%) to be issued on the Tron blockchain. The remaining 9.75 billion (43%) is expected to be added to the Ethereum blockchain.
To achieve this aim, Tether has been actively minting new tokens. In March 2023, the issuer printed 9 billion USDT tokens, adding to its already released 3 billion created in the past month.
Following this, Tether further released 3.75 billion USDT tokens between June and July.
Burning Alongside Minting
quantity of digital tokens in circulation.
An innovative approach gaining traction involves burning or permanently retiring a preset amount of tokens from open circulation.
While buffering up its stablecoin portfolio, the USDT makers have also towed this unlikeliest of paths.
Although burning often reduces the amount of an asset in circulation, thereby leading to an increase in value due to less supply relative to demand, it works differently in the case of the USDT stablecoin.
It only ensures that the value of the tokenized greenback does not fall below the $1 peg.
For instance, Tether burned 1.2 billion USDT tokens on the Tron blockchain on August 22.
This event was preceded by a similar activity in June that saw 3.1 billion USDT on the Tron protocol and 2 billion USDT on the Ethereum network permanently removed from circulation.
Meanwhile, the stablecoin issuer is seemingly working on a new series of crypto-backed products scheduled for release in 2024.
Making this known, the platform’s CTO Paolo Ardoino stated that Tether is working on five new products that people could actually need.