Tether, the company behind the world's largest stablecoin, turned the printers back on and issued $1 billion USDT on Sunday (8), according to Whale Alert. The new crop of tokens was issued on the Tron Network, the network that went ahead of Ethereum and became the leading issuer of USDT tokens. With this new issue, stablecoin set a new record and reached a market capitalization of US$ 62.4 billion this Monday (9), consolidating its position as the third largest cryptocurrency in the market, only behind Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Since the crypto market went into correction in late May, Tether has taken a break from USDT issuance. As the BTC climbed back to $45,000 for the first time in three months, however, Tether has resumed the practice. The CTO of Tether, Paolo Ardoino, said on Twitter that the tokens were created to replenish the USDT inventory on the Tron network: “Please note that this is an authorized transaction, but not issued, which means that this amount will be used as inventory for next period issue requests and exchanges in chain”, he points out.
PSA: 1B USDt inventory replenish on Tron Network. Note this is authorized but not issued transaction, meaning that this amount will be used as inventory for next period underwritten requests and chain swaps.— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) August 8, 2022
Tether Reservations
Tether is the target of constant criticism in the crypto community for its lack of transparency about its reservations. The company used to claim that for every USDT issued in the market it had a dollar equivalent in cash. The issue left Tether facing a complicated court case with regulators. In April, the New York Attorney General ordered the company to pay a fine of $18.5 million for lying about stablecoin's backing and falsifying audits. In May, the company detailed its reserves for the first time since 2014 and showed that less than 3% of all USDT was cash-backed, contrary to previous claims. When Circle and Paxos released audits of their stablecoins in late July, Tether executives pledged to do the same soon, but didn't give a precise date. The company on Monday published an assurance report produced by Moore Cayman, a Cayman Islands-based firm, which attested UDST reserves on June 30th. The document, however, does not represent a complete audit. According to the report, Tether had $62.7 billion in cash that day. Of this total, nearly half (US$30.8 billion) was backed by commercial paper and certificates of deposit, and only 10% of the USDT reserve (US$6.2 billion) came from cash and bank deposits.
