Benzinga - Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) director Conor Grogan shed light on Alameda's significant involvement in Tether (CRYPTO: USDT) minting, suggesting potential arbitrage trading motives.
Onchain data indicates that Alameda was responsible for minting a staggering $39.55 billion of USDT, which accounts for nearly 47% of Tether's current circulating supply, Grogan said.
Onchain data shows that Alameda was responsible for minting $39.55B of USDT, a number that is 47% of Tether's circulating supply todayThis figure surpasses a previous estimate, which had pegged the number at approximately $36.7 billion. Grogan's updated figures incorporate additional wallets that were previously overlooked.A previous report by Protoss estimated the number at around $36.7B; I was able to update these figures with additional wallets I found pic.twitter.com/fYBvGAYlFd
— Conor (@jconorgrogan) October 9, 2023
In a timely connection to these findings, Benzinga's Future of Digital Assets conference, scheduled for Nov. 14, is anticipated to address such pivotal developments in the digital currency landscape. With industry experts and stakeholders converging, discussions around the implications of such large-scale minting activities and their impact on the crypto market are expected to take center stage.
Grogan pointed out that the amount of USDT minted was notably higher than Alameda's Assets Under Management (AUM) during the peak of the cryptocurrency market.
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This data aligns with figures submitted by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried to Forbes for their annual World’s Billionaires publication.
However, tracking redemptions poses challenges.
Tether's operations, particularly the coordination of burns, appear to be conducted off-chain. Instead of having specific deposit addresses, transactions are directly sent to the treasury.
If all USDT redemptions from FTX were solely from Alameda Research, then they would have redeemed an estimated 3.9 billion of USDT. The majority of this redemption occurred over two days in May, coinciding with the Luna (CRYPTO: LUNA) implosion.
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