‘Tether’ Flooding Into A Wallet Address Controlled By Kraken Exchange

By Kapil Gauhar

Tether (USDT) tokens are now flooding into a wallet address that is currently controlled by the Kraken exchange, which is one of the few places where troubled stablecoin could be converted into US dollars.

As indicated by the Tether Rich List, the wallet balance of the exchange stands at about 47.8 million USDT at the point of writing. This makes it the eighth most valuable wallet holding this asset.

Less than two weeks ago, on October 7th, Kraken’s Tether wallet ranked 22nd and held 21.6 million USDT, which is half of its current balance. Archived versions of the rich rundown demonstrate the wallet balance is wavering somewhere between 10 million and 24 million USDT in the time from late December 2017 to the early October.

In other words, the current balance is a notable outlier. Some market watchers have argued that the implication is when traders are willing to exchange their USDT for dollars.

Kraken Exchange is one among the few exchanges offering direct trades between dollars and USDT. Thus, the influx is a symbol that cryptocurrency market can still harbour the doubts about USDT, that saw its exchange rate falling below its $1.00 peg earlier this week.

For example, a Twitter user going by the name Soleil Du Soi, on Thursday, posed the question, “What are the reasons to exchange USDT to Kraken?” To this, another user answered, “You can get USD there.”

Significantly, Kraken exchange offers only one Tether pair, USDT/USD, so that traders can’t exchange USDT for any other cryptocurrency on Kraken.

There are many other implications that traders are heading to Kraken to offload the USDT. October 15 was the date that saw Tether’s exchange rate falling the farthest against the dollar. The greatest selling pressure was on Kraken, whereby USDT briefly touched $0.85. Tether exchanging volume for that day was the highest ever on the exchange.