A few days ago, a new class-action lawsuit was filed against Tether, piling up on the company’s long year of constant legal troubles it’s been facing for a while now.
The suit accuses Tether of deliberately manipulating the market for its own benefit and while it adds that “calculating damages at this stage is premature”, it estimates about $1.4 trillion in damages.
However, it would seem that the company is largely unbothered with the trouble, or has a few tricks up its sleeves, to get out of the mess. This is because the company has gone on to mint two new transactions worth about $32 million.
The two transactions took place about 8 hours apart on the same day, with the first one worth $20 million and the second at about $12.4 million. These transactions are probably not the biggest the market has seen in its Tether history. However, the timing might be enough cause of comments.
It’s also important to note how all of this might relate to Bitcoin (BTC). It’s been noticed more than a few times now, that fresh USDT mints pumped into the market, almost always acts as a catalyst for Bitcoin, triggering positive price activity. In fact, it’s also been noted in the past that this correlation can also be seen between the king coin and Tether’s 30-day moving average.
The recent USDT pumps also seemed to correspond with BTC at the time. BTC has been trading quite disappointingly after it fell below the $8,000 mark recently. However, prices reached and crossed the $8,200 mark around the same time these Tether pumps were recorded.
Generally, Tether’s signature heavy pumps have reduced especially since its cover-up case with the New York Attorney General. Even though printing definitely has not been halted, they are done in much lighter rounds and are not held down for long, but almost immediately spread.
At the moment, Tether’s USDT has the highest volume in the cryptocurrency market, with about $21.4 billion, beating out BTC by almost $4 billion.
