Tether whale received $1.1b USDT since October, buoying bullish speculation

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said a recent massive mint at the company’s treasury was intended for inventory purposes, while crypto proponents surmised a bullish thesis due to whale activity with USDT.

Whale Alert pointed to $1 billion USDT minted at Tether’s treasury on Nov. 22, propelling chatter among proponents around inflows to cryptocurrencies and rallying token prices as part of an upcoming bull run. 

Responding to the news, Ardoino stated that the transaction was earmarked to support USDT liquidity on Tron’s blockchain. Ardoino noted that the amount would be designated for future issuance requests on Justin Sun’s decentralized network.

At the same time, on-chain surveillance shop LookOnChain reported a particular crypto whale who has been the recipient of at least $1.1 billion USDT within a 30-day period, from Oct. 20 to Nov. 21.

The whale has deposited some of these assets on exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, Kraken and OKX, likely to purchase cryptocurrencies available on these platforms. 

This sort of activity is typically flagged as a bullish indicator and a signal that “smart money” is accumulating tokens ahead of significant price movements. USDT’s market cap was up to $88 billion at press time, a $20 billion increase since the start of 2023 according to Coingecko.

crypto.news cited a report that said digital asset inflows in 2023 had surpassed levels seen throughout 2022, following an upturn in demand for crypto investment products. Coinshares noted the largest influx of money into crypto since July 2022. 

Crypto prices have also experienced gains due to expectations that the Securities and Exchange Commission could soon approve a spot Bitcoin ETF, a development that experts say would bring billions into the Bitcoin (BTC) market.