KEY POINTS
- Tether now has over 75,000 BTC in its wallet, as per on-chain data
- Profits from Tether's BTC holdings have reached some $3 billion
- Bitcoin has been on a bull run in recent months after the approval of spot BTC ETFs
Tether, the cryptocurrency firm behind USDT, the world's largest stablecoin by market capitalization, has added thousands of Bitcoin (BTC) to its growing treasury of the digital coin during the first quarter of the year.
The stablecoin giant added 8,888 BTC to its digital wallet during Q1 2024, on-chain data revealed. The company now has 75,354 Bitcoin, purchased at an average price of $30,305, worth some $5.2 billion based on current prices. Tether's profit from its BTC holdings has reached roughly $3 billion, as per CoinDesk.
It is worth noting that Tether made no official announcement regarding its Q1 2024 BTC purchases, but multiple blockchain trackers such as Arkham Intelligence also identified the wallet as belonging to the stablecoin titan.
Tether's latest Bitcoin acquisition comes at a very busy time in the Bitcoin community, as Bitcoiners and observers anticipate the halving event later this month that takes place only every four years. It cuts the rewards of Bitcoin miners in half, reducing the rate at which new BTC is circulated in the market.
Bitcoin has been on a bull run in recent months, with the digital currency breaking 2021 highs to hit $73,000 last month. It has since been moving between $69,000 and $70,000, but is still up by some 65% so far in the year.
The crypto kingdom is particularly interested in the world's largest cryptocurrency by market cap due to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) decision to approve the first 11 spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in January. Since then, multiple companies have been snapping up Bitcoin at a faster rate, including the world's largest known corporate holder of BTC, Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy.
Amid the USDT's continuing popularity and Tether's other crypto activities such as the Bitcoin acquisition, the company has been under scrutiny in recent days after it was reported that the U.S. and United Kingdom are investigating over $20 billion in USDT that passed through Russia-based Garantex, a sanctioned crypto exchange.
The probe is in the early stages, which means that conclusions on Tether's potential wrongdoing, if any, are too early to make.
Tether previously helped the Department of Justice retrieve around $1.4 million worth of USDT tokens suspected of being "fraud proceeds" from a tech support scam network. The U.S. Attorney's Office acknowledged Tether's assistance in safely transferring the seized funds, and the company said its voluntary support underlines its commitment to helping fight the battle against cryptocurrencies being used in financial fraud operations.
