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Circle’s USDC and Tether’s USDT are the two largest stablecoins in the world, with a combined market capitalization of over $210 billion. However, the two tokens vary significantly in size, with USDT making up approximately $150 billion of that total. From this dominant position, Tether has been able to grow to achieve truly incredible profits, reporting that it earned $13 billion in 2024. This is compared to a mere $156 million for Circle. A portion of this difference comes down to the differences in reserves for the tokens . Read more: Why is Tether 213% bigger than Circle but 8,000% more profitable? For example, Circle maintains far more cash available than Tether — approximately $5.8 billion compared to Tether’s $64 million. This suggests that Tether has access to credit to manage redemptions. Tether is also willing to include certain types of investment in its reserves that Circle avoids, including: Secured loans Corpo...

After tracing the bitcoin listed on El Salvador’s sovereign balance sheet, some researchers wonder if Bitfinex – rather than Nayib Bukele’s administration – controls these coins. According to a newspaper report today from Fabricio Altamirano’s El Diario de Hoy, reblogged on sister website ElSalvador.com, nearly 100% of El Salvador’s bitcoin reserves originate from Bitfinex. The contentious print and web investigation cites a researcher, Mario Gómez, who further speculates that Bitfinex is aiding Bukele in faking ownership of bitcoin that is in fact donated, loaned, or otherwise controlled by Bitfinex. Protos has been unable to independently verify these extraordinary claims. Who controls El Salvador’s 6,114 bitcoin? Bukele’s administration hosts an official website claiming that the government owns 6,114.18 bitcoin. That figure matches third-party estimates at Nayib Tracker. These disclosure portals are limited in what they reveal, showing the balance in a specific...

Stablecoin issuer Tether Holdings Ltd is reportedly considering venturing into commodity trade financing amid a growing cash pile. According to a Bloomberg report, Tether Holdings, which generated $5.2 billion in net profits in the first half of 2024, is exploring the possibility of providing loans to commodities trading firms. Citing ‘people familiar with the matter,’ the report says that Tether has entered discussions with several commodities trading companies with a view of offering US dollar loans to the sector. Tether Ceo Paolo Ardoino tells Bloomberg he believes the opportunities in the commodities trading sector will be “massive in the future.” “We likely are not going to disclose how much we intend to invest in commodity trading. We are still defining the strategy. We are interested in exploring different commodity trading possibilities.” Bloomberg’s anonymous sources say Tether has also spoken with commodity trading firms about ways to...

Tether has released its most recent attestation, which claims record profits of $5.2 billion for the first half of 2024. However, a close review of the attestations shows that Tether ’s purchases of bitcoin seem to have been paused . For context, in May 2023, Tether announced its intention to “regularly allocate up to 15% of its net realized operating profits towards purchasing Bitcoin.” It further noted that these investments would “not exceed the Shareholder Capital Cushion” which has reached a total of almost $12 billion, however, the total amount of bitcoin on hand is less than $5 billion. Closely reviewing the attestations seems to suggest that Tether has not increased its quantity of bitcoin since its last attestation three months ago, despite these record profits .  This can be further confirmed by checking bc1qjasf9z3h7w3jspkhtgatgpyvvzgpa2wwd2lr0eh5tx44reyn2k7sfc27a4, the address that The Block has previously identified as where Tether w...

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has blacklisted two Crypto web sites accused of scamming investors and lying about executives, following criticism that the agency reacted too slowly to the recent JPEX scandal. According to SFC director of enforcement Cheng Tak-ka, both BitCuped and HongKongDAO were placed on an alert list on November 10 and 24 respectively. As reported by the South China Morning Post, both crypto sites attempted to attract investors with misleading claims. The SFC says it was tipped off by an anonymous source that HongKongDAO falsely claimed to have applied for the relevant operating licenses. It also led investors to believe its native token had a high market value. HongKongDAO sold HKD through two group chats, one for 10,000 Chinese-speaking members and another that served 1,700 in English. Police probe HK crypto exchange after users lose $15M to scams Read more: Seven more arrested and another supercar seized over JPEX scandal Accord...

Circle chief strategy officer (CSO) Dante Disparte wrote a letter to Senators Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren in response to claims surrounding the role of Circle in facilitating Hamas and other actors. In the letter, Circle makes sure to highlight two things: “Circle does not facilitate, directly or indirectly, or finance Hamas… Nor does Circle bank Justin Sun.”  On Justin Sun, Circle said that “Neither Mr. Sun nor any entity owned or controlled by Mr. Sun, including the TRON Foundation or Huobi Global, currently have accounts with Circle. To date, the U.S. government has not specifically designated Mr. Sun or his entities as Specially Designated Nationals. Nonetheless, Circle terminated all accounts held by Mr. Sun and his affiliated companies in February 2023.” This seems to imply that Circle did serve Justin Sun or his companies up until February 2023 . Sun is a very important figure in the stablecoin ecosystem, receiving more Tether than any ot...

The Justice Department said the funds were stolen from over 70 victims who fell prey to a relationship scam, adding that USDT issuer Tether aided the seizure. Tether (USDT) tokens worth $9 million were seized by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) from a criminal organization utilizing romance schemes to swindle unsuspecting American investors out of their cryptocurrency holdings.  The DoJ said the assets rightfully belonged to over 70 victims of a so-called “pig butchering” scam, a fraudulent scheme that involves forming a romantic relationship with a target and eventually convincing them to invest money into unsound platforms.  The platforms, usually crypto exchanges or protocols, are operated by scammers and users find themselves unable to withdraw their funds after a while. Per a Nov. 21 press release, the DoJ plans to dedicate resources to tackling illicit activity and bad actors using crypto for public harm. This seizure should also serve as a reminder to cyber...

According to a Hong Kong Stock Exchange filing, Boyaa plans to purchase crypto over the next 12 months. Chinese publicly traded online game developer Boyaa Interactive is set to dive deep into the crypto market. In a recent filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the firm revealed its plans to purchase up to $100 million worth of crypto within the next 12 months. In the document published on Nov. 13, Boyaa said that cryptocurrencies align with the firm’s web3 business, adding that digital currencies are considered an “important part of the group’s asset allocation strategy.” Once Boyaa gets approval from its shareholders, it plans to put up to $90 million into Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). The remaining $10 million the firm plans to spend on stablecoins Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC). You might also like: Bitget abandons registration plans in Hong Kong The crypto purchases are expected through HashKey Exchange, one of the few licensed cryp...

As the interest rate environment has changes, the market of EUR stablecoin issuers has changed significantly. Circle Internet Financial has become the largest EUR-backed stablecoin (EURC) issuer on the market, surpassing Tether’s EURT and Stasis’ EURS stablecoins. According to Kaiko’s newsletter, EURC’s market share among other stablecoin s in total USD volume surpassed 65% in October 2023, a year and a half after Circle launched the stablecoin . EUR stablecoin market share | Source: Kaiko However, cryptocurrency aggregators show a slightly different picture. According to CoinGecko, Stasis’ EURS is the largest EUR-backed stablecoin, with approximately $133 million in market capitalization. EUR stablecoins by market cap | Source: CoinGecko EURC took the second place with $54.8 million, followed by EURT with roughly $39 million. It is unclear if CoinGecko takes into account liquidity on a multi-chain level. You might also like: Circl...

A July hack that siphoned nearly $40 million from CoinsPaid, one of the world’s biggest Crypto payment providers, was reportedly triggered by a fake 40-minute job interview . Hackers working with infamous North Korean cybercrime collective Lazarus apparently spent months probing the Estonia-based firm’s systems and security before launching the attack. As reported by Bloomberg, the hackers posed as a recruiter and reached out to a CoinsPaid employee with a tempting job offer, supposedly on behalf of Singapore-based exchange Crypto .com. During the interview , the employee, instructed by the fake recruiter, downloaded a malicious file onto his work computer, believing he was about to take a technical test. Instead, money started to disappear from the CoinsPaid platform and despite the firm shutting down the hackers within a few hours, $37 million had already been leeched from its Crypto wallets . US-based JumpCloud hacked by North Korean gov’t group to loot crypto firms R...

Stablecoin issuer Tether has responded to claims that it deactivated the accounts of major crypto firms, including MoonPay. Tether, the company behind market-leading stablecoin Tether (USDT), has addressed concerns regarding its operational decisions. According to documents released by the New York Attorney General (NYAG), Tether reportedly deactivated approximately 29 account s belonging to prominent cryptocurrency players in 2021. It appears that most individuals on the list had their account s terminated for different reasons. While the reasons for the account terminations were not disclosed, Tether responded by indicating that it is unwilling to comment on individual relationships. However, the company clarified that all individuals had undergone rigorous compliance checks during onboarding, as well as ongoing monitoring, as mandated by Tether’s compliance policies. Among the account s that were deactivated, notable entities such as MoonPay, BlockFi, CMS Holdings (a crypto inv...

Decentralization enables programmability — and that allows stablecoins to wield a key advantage over central bank digital currencies. When it comes to providing stable value, stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) appear to serve two sides of the same proverbial coin. Crypto stable assets, however, can provide entirely different use cases — and CBDCs simply cannot compete.  The key is programmability — smart contracts that automate and add new features to money. Programmability allows for asset backing and decentralization that is not possible under current CBDC designs. Developers should be taking advantage of the programmable opportunities that stable assets offer rather than trying to compete with CBDCs. Stable-asset issuers articulate that they can make the current monetary system better — primarily in three ways. First, stable assets can help reduce the costs of traditional financial activity, such as decentralized borrowing/lending via decentralized finance (DeF...

On one hand, the global economy is in the midst of a banking crisis. On the other, crypto assets have been thriving and attaining new 2023 highs. In fact, companies from the ecosystem are also expecting to churn out profits. USDT stablecoin issuer Tether is one such name. Recently, Tether ’s Technology Chief told CNBC that Tether could register about $700 million in profits in the first quarter of this year. That will make its total excess reserves surpass the $1 billion threshold. Here, it is worth recalling that the company registered the same $700 million in profit during the December quarter. Tether ’s reserves were boosted by the aforementioned profit. As Watcher Guru reported, Tether ’s consolidated total assets stood around $67.04 billion at that time, while its consolidated total liabilities were at least $66.08 billion. In all, it had a surplus reserve of at least $960 million. According to CNBC, Paolo Ardoino, Tether ’s chief technology officer, said the comp...

Towards the end of last week, Silvergate discontinued its 24/7 instant settlement exchange network, SEN. Notably, institutions that used the said platform to move funds to crypto currency exchanges. Right from Kraken to Gemini and Binance.US, a host of prominent names from space were the bank’s clients. A recent Analysis report from Kaiko pointed out how the said situation could be a boon for Stablecoins , for they could be used to fill the void created by Silvergate . SEN was notably one of the only fiat payment rails in the crypto industry. Without it, Kaiko noted, “liquidity could suffer.” Even though Signature Bank seems to be another banking alternative, stablecoins could step up. Elaborating on the same, the report highlighted, “Specifically, it will become harder to quickly deploy fiat capital via exchanges, with Signature Bank now one of the only banking alternatives. But of course, there is another widely-used on-ramp into crypto: s...