Whale watchers are eyeing Tether, Bitcoin and XRP to try and figure out if recent activity offers any insight into where the crypto markets will head next.
Traders briefly got excited on Monday as the stablecoin company Tether issued 200,000,000 USDT.
💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 200,000,000 #USDT (200,836,214 USD) minted at Tether Treasury
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) December 9, 2019
According to recent analysis from the analytics company TokenAnalyst, the creation of new USDT is strongly correlated with past Bitcoin rallies. When new USDT is minted, the company finds that the price of BTC rises 70% of the time.
However, today’s minting of 200,000,000 USDT is different. It turns out the move is part of Tether’s efforts to replace outdated Omni-based tokens with Ethereum-based tokens.
The end result is that today’s creation of new USDT will not increase the supply of Tether and is far less likely to have an impact on the markets.
Tether is designed to be pegged to the dollar, and traders use it as a way to sidestep crypto market volatility. The company says it mints new USDT at times of increased interest and trading volume, although it has been accused of creating new tokens simply to try to boost the price of BTC.
Meanwhile, traders are trying to determine why a large XRP whale is moving 38,000,000 XRP worth about $8.6 million.
The whale sent the funds from the crypto exchange Bitstamp to crypto platform Uphold which allows traders to buy and sell a number of digital assets.
Bitcoin whales are also surfacing at the start of the week. In the past 24 hours, whales have moved 2,811 BTC worth about $21.1 million.
- 831 BTC worth $6.2 million transferred from Coinbase to unknown wallet
- 989 BTC worth $7.5 million transferred from unknown wallet to Bitfinex
- 991 BTC worth $7.4 million transferred from Binance to Bitfinex
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