Tether Minted 5 Billion USDT By Mistake – And Immediately Burned Them

The stablecoin operator Tether is in the coming altcoin news for accidentally minting and subsequently burning 5 billion in USDT tokens. A Twitter profile named Whale Alert showed that Tether minted 5 billion USDT by mistake in a tweet published on July 13.

💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 5,000,000,000 #USDT (4,996,932,524 USD) minted at Tether Treasury

Tx: https://t.co/2FzJrc3tyi

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) July 13, 2019

Commonly known in the crypto community because of the reports linked to moved funds, Whale Alert is a Twitter account dedicated to reporting large cryptocurrency transactions. As the profile noted, 50 million USDT tokens were transferred from the cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex to the Tether Treasury via the Omni protocol on the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain. The account subsequently reported that Tether minted 5 billion USDT on the Tron blockchain which is why it burned them afterwards.

After that, Tether minted another 50 million USDT on the same chain and burned another 4.5 billion USDT. Finally, Tether transferred 50 million Tron-based USDT tokens to a wallet that presumably belonged to Poloniex.

“Official news is that the amount printed should be have been 50M as part of a swap from Omni to Tron Tether. This was corrected by burning the full amount in two subsequent transactions,” the Twitter profile of Whale Alert added later on.

In a tweet, the CTO of Tether Paolo Ardoino explained that Tether meant to perform a swap of 50 million Omni-based USDT tokens to the Tron blockchain. However, a mistake was made with the decimals which is how Tether minted something extra and why they burned these coins.

“While preparing the issuance for Omni to Tron swap there have been an issue with the token decimals. Please check the burn transactions below,” he noted.

While preparing the issuance for Omni to Tron swap there have been an issue with the token decimals. Please check the burn transactions below @Tether_tohttps://t.co/reEW51qCqihttps://t.co/zo5i3ayTuQ https://t.co/h1Y9Mnr4Oq

— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) July 13, 2019

The cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex confirmed this in a tweet, stating:

“Paolo is correct – this occurred while Poloniex was conducting a USDT chain swap with the help of Tether. An incorrect amount of USDT was accidentally minted, and this has since been resolved to the intended value.”

As many best cryptocurrency news sites reported earlier this week, the New York based Metropolitan Commercial Bank shut down the accounts associated with Tether. The bank reportedly closed the accounts after a request last year.

The altcoin news today show a lot of red on the market and a market cap that lost more than $30 billion overnight, dropping to a new point at $278 billion.