Another $250 Mil. USDT Exits Circulation, Tether’s Market Cap Sinks As A Result

Tether (USDT) is one of the viral topics in today’s crypto news section, especially after sinking to $2.2 billion as another 250 million USDT exists circulation. The loss of the US dollar peg is also driving down the market cap of the dollar-pegged stablecoin, which is the largest one in the altcoin market.

The USD-backed token started its fall a few days ago, dropping from the $2.9 billion which it had since late August – to $2.2 billion in market cap, representing a two-month decline of 25%.

A portion of that decline is a direct result of the USDT price and its fall below $1.00 in assets that are apparently backing each other. As we reported earlier, the USDT/USD peg slipped away first yesterday, throwing major uncertainty into the market that relies on billions of dollars worth of Tether that is trading on a daily basis.

Even though the dollar-pegged stablecoin managed to climb to $0.98, the Tether price dropped to as low as $0.85 on the Kraken exchange, before recovering to the present value. What’s most interesting is the fact that early this morning, Tether (USDT) yanked 250 million USDT out of circulation after Bitfinex sent payments of 50 million USDT and 200 million USDT to the token’s treasury address.

As of today, the Tether treasury is holding more than 736 million USDT, funds that according to the company “have been authorized, but not issued.”