Stablecoin issuer Tether now holds over $5 billion worth of Bitcoin, according to public blockchain data.
Arkham Intelligence data—which tracks the crypto giant’s wallet—reveals that the company now holds over 75,354 Bitcoin, worth more than $5.1 billion as of this writing, after the firm bought 8,889 BTC in the first quarter of this year.
Tether is the company behind the third-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, USDT. The company is one of the biggest Bitcoin holders, and has said its strategy is to keep buying the largest digital asset by market cap.
Tether said last year that it would regularly allocate up to 15% of its net realized operating profits towards purchasing Bitcoin. The idea is to use the asset to hold in the reserves it uses to back its stablecoin.
The stablecoin—a digital coin backed by U.S. dollars or other real world assets—is the backbone of the crypto-economy; it’s widely used by traders for buying and selling digital assets and has a much higher 24-hour trading volume mark than Bitcoin.
Tether is a somewhat controversial company: in the past, it has been criticized for not being transparent enough about what backs USDT. And news reports have claimed the cryptocurrency is used to break the law, though that allegation isn't unique to USDT.
Tether today reported a net profit of $1.48 billion, with the company behind the world’s biggest stablecoin saying it was “very optimistic for the future.”
In a Wednesday blog post, the sometimes controversial company summed up its 2023 Q1 assurance report—prepared by accounting firm BDO Italia—by revealing that its reserves reached an all-time high of $2.44 billion, a $1.48 billion increase over the same quarter last year.
The company also said that most of its reserves were held in cash and...
The price of Bitcoin is now below $69,000 per coin, having dropped nearly 3% in the past day. CoinGecko data shows that the asset is now priced at $68,567. Last month, the biggest digital coin hit a new all-time high ahead of the impending halving, and was closing in on $74,000.
Circle’s dynamite IPO this week wasn’t just impressive by crypto standards—it outperformed expectations to a degree unrivaled even by America’s most prominent tech companies.
The evening before its Thursday trading debut on the New York Stock Exchange, Circle priced its stock, CRCL, at $31 a share. That represented a mark-up from the lower share prices the firm floated earlier in the week: $26, and then $28. Such last-minute moves are generally indicative of increased investor interest in a comp...
Public Keys is a weekly roundup from Decrypt that tracks the key publicly traded crypto companies.
This week: Gemini makes its own IPO move after Circle's explosive debut (and continued rise Friday), while Strategy boosts its Bitcoin buying power.
Twinsies!
Crypto exchange Gemini confirmed that it has filed to go public, within 24 hours of USDC issuer Circle making its euphoric debut on the New York Stock Exchange.
Rumors started making the rounds in February and March that Gemini, which has bee...
USDC issuer Circle, which made its whirlwind of a New York Stock Exchange debut yesterday, has already topped the high it set on Thursday.
Around 1pm ET on Friday, CRCL reached a high of $123.51—just 49 cents shy of fully quadrupling its IPO price. The stock is already trading 44% higher than its $83.23 close at a current price just shy of $120. It's a strong follow after the company tripled its $31 IPO price on its opening day.
As of this writing, the company has reached an intraday market cap...
