The cryptocurrency market received a fresh inflow of capital after stablecoin issuer Tether minted $1 billion worth of tokens on Monday.
After making a strong comeback from recent lows, the cryptocurrency market looks set to build on the positive momentum going into the new week. Aiding the cause is a fresh injection of capital into the ecosystem by popular stablecoin issuer Tether.
According to Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, the newly released 1 billion USDT tokens on the Tron network are an authorized mint that has not yet been issued. In other words, the stablecoin company will use the tokens as an inventory to fulfill issuance requests and chain swaps from its partners.
💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 1,000,000,000 #USDT (999,867,499 USD) minted at Tether Treasuryhttps://t.co/gsqH4AJVdl
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) January 29, 2024
Evidently, the newly minted tokens come as a boost to the crypto markets. As a stablecoin issuer, Tether mints and releases new tokens primarily based on requests from its institutional clients. The USDT stablecoin represents one of the easiest rails for investors to get access to tokenized US dollars for navigating the volatile cryptocurrency market.
Only time will then reveal how the latest issuance impacts market performance. However, such mint events generally improve market sentiment and serve as an indicator of incoming institutional demand.
Tether Market Cap Approaches $100B
The latest token issuance follows a trend that has seen the stablecoin issuer start the new year as strong as it ended the previous year. Since the start of 2023, the stablecoin’s market cap has risen nearly 50% from $62 billion to $96 billion at the time of writing.
Against the odds, Tether has already gained $4 billion since the start of the new year, putting it on track to break the previous year’s record. The surge in market capitalization has helped the stablecoin cement its position as one of the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and well ahead of its closest rival, USDC.
While USDC gained $2 billion worth of market capitalization in January, its overall valuation at $26 billion represents less than 30% of Tether’s overall market cap. Tether has also been accumulating Bitcoin for its business, putting the firm in a more favorable light with the crypto community.
