Tether prints $300 million USDT for a swap, forgets to burn it

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If you’re already suspicious of Tether’s activity in the cryptocurrency market, recent news isn’t going to help that very much. Market observers have caught them in another embarrassing situation, once again proving their currency is too questionable to really be called “stable.”

On September 12, Tether announced on Twitter that they would be coordinating a fairly large swap of $300 million worth of crypto.

In few hours Tether will coordinate with a 3rd party to perform a chain swap (conversion from Omni to ERC20 protocol) for 300M USDt. Tether total supply will not change during this process.

— Tether (@Tether_to) September 12, 2019

This isn’t totally out of the ordinary; Tether has coordinate swaps in the same value range as recently as August 6, 2019, when they moved $275 million. Problem is, they also have a history of screwing this kind of thing up, like when they intended to mint $50 million for a July swap, but accidentally minted $5 billion. Users weren’t going to let them forget that past mistake either.

Will they accidentally swap $3 billion this time?

— Randy 𝔅𝔖𝓥 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣4️⃣ 🅷🅿🆁🅱🆃🅲🅽🆉🆃🅽 (@Bitc01nSV2024) September 12, 2019

Well, regardless of the jokes, Whale Alert took note of the $300 Tether (USDT) when It was minted, followed it to Binance, but then suspiciously noted that the corresponding and expected burn on the Omni chain has yet to take place.

ℹ️ This USDT mint is part of a swap. The corresponding burn on Omni has not taken place yet.

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) September 12, 2019

This left the crypto community to once again speculate what kind of trouble Tether was getting up to. Were they just being sloppy, or was this another attempt to pump the market? With a fresh $300 million in the market (and a failure to burn it), really anything could be possible.

And with Tether, questions seem to be fair. They’ve already been alleged to be a part of a $850 million cover-up with their Bitfinex big brother. Most recently, their co-founder admitted to not having much of an idea how a stablecoin should work.

For the most used stablecoin in the crypto market, these are all very concerning things. Exchanges like Bitfinex and Binance depend on Tether for liquidity, and Tether has repeatedly shown signs that they are creating money out of thin air and possibly contributing to a bubble of investment that is about to pop. If you’re buying cryptocurrency as a safe-haven for your assets, these should all be red flags for your investments.