Tether (USDT) has announced that it has issued a total of 250 million tokens. This is the first issue in about a month and a clear indication that the printing wallet is still open. With the new issue, USDT’s supply now stands at over $2.85 billion.

Bitcoin prices expected to go up

At the end of March, Tether had issued a total of 300 million tokens, which led to a slight increase in the price of Bitcoin. After the recent printing, USDT’s trading share rose to over 22%. 30% of all the USDT trading was being carried out through Ethereum (ETH), with reduced influence on EOS. Out of all the ETH trades, 25% were in USDT pairs.

Fiat-backed crypto

USDT is said to be backed 1:1 by the US dollar. It is used as a proxy for physical dollar on several digital currency exchanges. This is because of the fact that many exchanges have problems working with banks so as to hold fiat money on behalf of their customers.

Tether’s initial move to float 300 million tokens which subsequently led to a slight rise in the price of bitcoin met a lot of backlash and criticism on Twitter. Many criticized the startup of lacking an official audit that would confirm its claims of being backed by fiat.

Currently it is not clear on where the tokens will be trading. In most cases, the tokens trade on Binance. However, CoinBene is most active platform for trading of USDT. Additionally, OKEx also has a considerable amount of USDT wallet.

In 2017, printings of Tether directly flowed into Bitcoin trading hence raising the price. The assets however spread into altcoins and it is believed that it contributed to the rise of EOS and other tokens.

Owing to the big loss in price position, USDT digital asset is currently ranked among the top in on CoinMarketCap. It has since displaced TRON (TRX). Trading of USDT has also been very active and has surpassed $4 billion in 24 hours.

A report published recently confirmed that the Tether company may actually have the money to float at least 2.5 billion tokens.