In the early hours of Thursday, traders became apprehensive as millions of dollars worth of tether (USDT) stablecoins were observed being sold off on Uniswap and Curve pools, causing the token’s value to drop to as low as $0.9968, which is below its typical trading value of $1 as per CoinMarketCap data; however, the token has since risen to $0.998 in recent trades.
On Thursday, the USDT balances on Curve’s prominent 3pool, which facilitates the swapping of stablecoins including USDT, USDC, and DAI, surged to over 72%, indicating that traders had moved tens of millions of USDT in exchange for stablecoins USDC and DAI.
The 3pool of Curve presently holds more than $300 million worth of USDT, alongside almost $55 million worth of DAI and USDC each, indicating a growing inclination towards DAI and USDC over tether; this trend has been seen before during the Terra crisis in May and the FTX exchange failure in November, as previously reported by CoinDesk.
Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of Tether, proposed in a tweet that some traders may be attempting to benefit from the present apprehensive mood in the broader cryptocurrency markets, which have experienced a decline in the past 24 hours; he further stated that Tether is prepared to redeem any amount and is unfazed by potential attackers seeking to profit from the situation.
