Tron Loses 23% of Its $4.3B USDT Reserves to DeFi Hotbed Ethereum

Aug 20, 2020 at 19:39 UTCUpdated Aug 20, 2020 at 19:59 UTC

The chain swap happened early Thursday morning. (Shutterstock)

Stablecoin issuer Tether shifted 1 billion in USDT from the Tron blockchain to the Ethereum blockchain in an early morning chain swap Thursday.

• Swapped in conjunction “with a 3rd party,” according to a Tether tweet, the token transfer drains 23% of TRON’s USDT reserves, which previously stocked $4.3 billion in the stablecoin.
• It also pumps up Ethereum’s reserves, where well over half of the nearly $13 billion circulating USDT already reside. Ethereum is a hotbed for decentralized finance projects and as such a popular spot for USDT.
• Tether has played a notable role in the Ethereum blockchain’s recent congestion, according to Decrypt.
• Big-dollar USDT transfers and billion-token burns spotted by the exchange-tracking Twitter account Whale Alert suggest that Binance may be the third party that ordered the swap.

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