Alameda Research may have minted up to $40B of Tether’s USDT: Report

Bankrupt crypto firm Alameda Research is reportedly responsible for minting roughly $40 billion of Tether’s USDT, according to Coinbase director Conor Grogan.

Per Grogan’s analysis, the troubled cryptocurrency trading company appears to be responsible for 47% of USDT’s circulating supply. A 2021 Protos report had pegged this amount at around $36.7 billion.

Meanwhile, the crypto enthusiast pointed out an interesting finding in his research, which showed that:

“The amount of minted USDT was higher than Alameda’s AUM at the crypto peak, according to SBF data (submitted to Forbes as part of their annual World’s Billionaires publication)”

The Coinbase director further noted that getting a lead on the amount of redemptions processed by Tether for Alameda was difficult. He said:

“Getting a read on redemptions is challenging, partly because Tether seems to do offchain coordination of burns (They dont have deposit addresses; shops just send funds direct to treasury). If we assume all USDT redemptions from FTX were from Alameda (and not another MM) then they redeemed 3.9B of USDT (most all of it during 2 days in May during the Luna implosion).”

The above revelation has elicited mixed reactions from the crypto community, pointing out how the current criminal trial of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder of Alameda and FTX, has provided insight into the transactions executed between the firms.

Witness testimony by Gary Wang, an FTX’s co-founder, detailed how Alameda could withdraw the exchange customer funds, maintain negative balances, and trade faster on the platform.

Meanwhile, Tether refused to comment on the Grogan’s investigation. The stablecoin issuer told CryptoSlate that it does not comment on its customers’ transactions as a matter of policy. It added:

“All operations were fully conducted in line with our standard issuance payment requirements.”

Tether USDT is the dominant stablecoin in the crypto market, with a market capitalization of $83.51 billion and a trading volume of $18.22 billion in the last 24 hours, according to CryptoSlate’s data.

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