Bitfinex Now Has the Second-Richest Tether (USDT) Wallet

Bitfinex now lines up as the second biggest holder of Tether (USDT) in its hot wallet, surpassed only by the main Binance wallet. On October 8, several exchanges saw USDT inflows, including Binance, Huobi, Kraken. Bitfinex was among those exchanges and now holds more than 259 million USDT.

What is more worrying is that while the Bitfinex exchange accumulates the dollar-pegged USDT, there are noticeable outflows of Bitcoin (BTC) from its cold wallet, with thousands of BTC flowing out in the past days. In a recent blog, Bitfinex denied rumors of insolvency, but still, the wallet withdrawals have been significant in the past month.

Additionally, the Tether treasury has taken out 100 million USDT from Bitfinex on Tuesday, October 9. With the latest move, the Tether treasury now holds more than 286 million USDT.

The latest movements come at a time when the Tether company sees decreasing trust, as the tokens reveal even less clear circumstances around their dollar backing. The tranches of USDT to exchanges started to accelerate after the news of Puerto Rico based Noble Bank having financial troubles.

Without immediate news surrounding the fate of Noble Bank, it is also possible that USDT tokens are moving into exchanges for the next expected move toward the end of the year.

But another worrying indicator has persevered in the past day - inflows of USDT into Kraken, where there are attempts to sell for dollars. Kraken is among the exchanges receiving USDT this Monday, October 8. In the past day, once again selling pressured USDT to as low as $0.95, showing that price slippage is quite real when selling is attempted.

USDT tokens have accumulated on exchanges for a week now, but have not caused a rally in BTC prices. The next round of accumulation also sees BTC prices remaining stagnant, again hovering around $6,500. At the same time, BTC is seeing more than 51% of its volume in pairings with USDT. The dollar-pegged asset also takes up more than 20% of all crypto trades.