The Bitfinex and Tether news has created a massive buzz leading people to speculate the aftermath of the lawsuit. Meanwhile, there have been massive amounts of USDT being sent from wallets to exchanges.
According to @soliel_dusoir9, a Twitter user, Binance’s cold wallet moved $127 million USDT.
.@cz_binance has moved 127M USDT from @binance ‘s cold wallet since the Tether news broke. pic.twitter.com/HEgNTag982
— Soleil #DelistTether (@soleil_dusoir9) April 27, 2019
At press time, the available balance in the cold wallet [1pYbaaWDhezjBkXBHEUqTHCc6DbefSZiK] was 654 million USDT. Since April 2019, the wallet has sent a total of approximately 210 million USDT from the above-mentioned wallet.
In addition, to Binance, 5 million USDT was transferred from Bitfinex to Huobi.
4,999,994 #USDT (4,948,933 USD) transferred from #Bitfinex to #Huobi
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) April 28, 2019
Another 5 million was transferred from unknown wallet to Bitfinex.
4,999,999 #USDT (5,027,714 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to #Bitfinex
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) April 28, 2019
Another massive chunk of USDT, approximately 13 million USDT was sent from Poloniex exchange to Tether treasury, on April 27, 2019. This could be Poloniex exchange redeeming US Dollars by sending their USDT back to the treasury. A few minutes later, the same amount of USDT was transferred to Tether Treasury by Poloniex.
? 13,000,000 #USDT (12,913,506 USD) transferred from #Poloniex to Tether Treasury
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) April 27, 2019
Ever since the news broke out there has been a surge in stablecoin activity. 10 million USDT was moved from Kraken exchange to Bitfinex exchange on April 27, 2019. Another transfer of similar amount was sent to the Tether treasury from Bitfinex.
? 10,989,000 #USDT (10,944,951 USD) transferred from #Bitfinex to Tether Treasury
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) April 26, 2019
Moreover, people have been shifting from USDT to other stablecoins like Paxos, USDC, and others. Approximately, 45 million USDC was moved into two different wallets from USDC Treasury to an unknown wallet on April 27, 2019.
? 14,999,500 #USDC (15,366,975 USD) transferred from USDC Treasury to unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) April 27, 2019
The transaction was sent to two different wallets and was split into 15 million USDC and 30 million. Apart from the above transaction, another transaction of 34 million USDC was moved from USDC Treasury to an unknwon wallet.
? ? ? 34,334,172 #USDC (35,013,695 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) April 26, 2019
The surge in stablecoin transaction volume indicates that the lawsuit brought forth by the NYAG is not being treated lightly by players in the industry, be it Binance or other exchanges. The decision that comes from NYAG after the lawsuit is finalized will affect every other player in the industry and would send a clear message to all the bad actors in the ecosystem.