Tether Whales are Returning USDT Recently Dumped; What does this Mean?

Santiment has pointed out another indicator to look out for that could signal a crypto market recovery. Per the data, Tether USDT shark and whale wallets — wallets that hold between $100k and $10 million of the dollar-pegged stablecoin — have been adding back to accumulation ways. 

In a tweet, Santiment said that these wallets had added back some of the USDT they dumped from late 2021 to July 2022. The USDT circulating supply of this cohort of investors has risen to 30%.

According to the crypto analytics platform, a striking correlation exists between the price of Bitcoin (BTC) and the amount of stablecoin buying power from large holders.

With the growth of the USDT supply on whale addresses, Bitcoin has been entering an uptrend, which is why the current increase of the supply on addresses is considered a bullish sign by Santiment.

Meanwhile, USDT has not been the only stablecoin analysts are looking to in order to identify the return of buying power to the market. Ki Young Ju, the CEO of CryptoQuant, recently noted that investors should monitor USDC to identify the return of institutional investors to the market. 

According to Ju, most whale holders of the stablecoin are traditional finance (TradFi) institutional investors like BlackRock, Fidelity, and Goldman Sachs, among others. He argued that when these institutions’ clients direct them to deploy the USDC holding, it could likely spark a return to bullish trading in the crypto market. 

USDT is facing stiff competition from other stablecoins

While whales have been accumulating the “raw gum powder” asset, the market is also in the midst of its power tussle as stablecoins from various issues are struggling for market dominance. USDT, the current largest stablecoin by market cap, has been seeing its market share getting eroded by other stablecoins.

Per data from Dune, USDC has had the share of stablecoin transfer volume in the last 30 days. Tether came in third in the metric as it was also surpassed by DAI, the algorithmic stablecoin issued by the Ethereum-based protocol MakerDAO.  

Regardless, USDT remains the king of stablecoins as it continues to have about 46.7% market dominance with a capitalization of over $140 billion. This dominance is likely to continue as its issuer, Tether, has continued to clarify controversies around its backing. ZyCrypto recently reported that Tether had cut its commercial paper holdings to zero.