The issuer of the stablecoin Tether assisted the cryptocurrency exchange Binance in a cross-chain transfer of 3 billion USDT from Tron to Ethereum.
In few minutes Tether will coordinate with Binance to perform a chain swap, converting from Tron to Ethereum ERC20, for 3B USDt. The #tether total supply will not change during this process.
Learn more about chain swaps ⬇️https://t.co/abfgnELSvi
— Tether (@Tether_to) December 13, 2022
The overall supply of the ‘stablecoin’ across all networks remained unchanged, as noted by Tether.
The issuer’s CTO Paolo Ardoino told The Block that technically the exchange sent the stablecoins in TRC-20 format to the company’s treasury wallet. After this, Tether carried out the reverse operation in ERC-20 format.
The transactions came amid a large surge in withdrawal requests across various cryptocurrencies from Binance. This forced the platform’s management to suspend withdrawals in USDC on the Tron, BNB Chain and Ethereum networks. The restrictions did not affect USDT and BUSD.
«There was a net outflow of $1.14 billion today. We’ve seen this before. Some days we have net withdrawals; some days we have net deposits. For us, it’s business as usual» — said Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
We saw some withdrawals today (net $1.14b ish). We have seen this before. Some days we have net withdrawals; some days we have net deposits. Business as usual for us.
I actually think it is a good idea to “stress test withdrawals” on each CEX on a rotating basis. 💪
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) December 13, 2022
As of writing, 35.87 billion tokens have been issued on the Tron blockchain, 28.02 billion on Ethereum, with a total of over 66 billion across all networks.
From the screenshot below it follows that in the second-largest cryptocurrency network, 4.28 billion tokens are authorised but not issued. The figure rose as a result of Binance’s request for a cross-chain transfer of USDT.
On December 11, Binance suspended withdrawals for a range of assets and restricted some users’ accounts due to “abnormal price movements in certain trading pairs.”
Previously consulted WSJ experts said there were alarming signals in Mazars’ report on the exchange’s bitcoin reserves.
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