Cryptocurrency market update: Tether mints 30 million new USDT tokens BTC, XRP, and ETH plummet

The market finally yielded to the bearish calls in the last couple of weeks. The drop seems to have been necessary as upward movement was becoming untenable. The entire crypto market flash dropped with the majority of crypto assets smashing through key support levels. In less than 24 hours the entire crypto market lost $19 billion from $223 billion to $204 billion. In the same period the negative trading volume ballooned from $57 billion to $79 billion.

Interestingly, the Tether Treasury is said to have minted 30 million USDT tokens which were transferred to Bitfinex exchange following the bloodshed. The entire process of minting was done on the Tron blockchain according to the Whale Alert. A similar incident occurred about a month ago whereby Tether Treasury minted $15 million in USDT and later transferred the tokens to Huobi exchange. At the time, Bitcoin price slumped to levels around $8,000.

The minting has been correlated to Bitcoin price pump by many analysts in the crypto market. While it may be true Tether uses USDT to manipulate Bitcoin, the pumping process is not entirely illegal. Tether and Bitfinex have been investigated for market manipulation before but it seems they have a way of getting away with it,

Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple update

The intraday charts clearly show that the three largest markets in the crypto space are very suppressed. Bitcoin is trading under $7,500, although it hovered just below $8,000 on Wednesday. Ripple declines thrust through the support at $0.28 to test $0.26 on the downside. Ethereum, on the other hand, failed to hold above $170 leading to a correction that touched $160. Ether is valued at $160.50 after losing 1.26% of its value on the day.