[Update 10/24/2019: No new Tether (USDT) was minted. This transaction was a chain swap between ERC20 and Tron.]

Yet again, we have observed the Tether Treasury minting a significant amount of USDT shortly after the Bitcoin price dropped hard to below $8,000.

This time, the Whale Alert (@whale_alert) Twitter account has noted a minting of $30 million in USDT on the TRON blockchain by the Treasury, who then moved it to the Bitfinex exchange.

Around a month ago, the Treasury acted similarly, minting around $15 million in USDT and moving it to the Huobi exchange after the last time Bitcoin’s price crashed to around $8,000, as BeInCrypto has previously reported. Since then, the Tether Treasury has also minted close to 2.5 million USDT on TRON shortly after minting around 20 million USDT a week beforehand. As you may know, these mintings mainly occur on the TRON blockchain as of late, as BeInCrypto has also previously reported.

Of course, these moves are almost certainly being done to pump Bitcoin’s price, as many have come to figure out a correlation between the two. As BeInCrypto has also previously touched on, whenever there is a drop in Tether trading volume, we tend to see Bitcoin’s price correct significantly. That said, this isn’t inherently legal, and the company has been involved in a lawsuit for some time regarding the pumping. After all, this minting is technically a form of market manipulation, and it’s any wonder how Tether and Bitfinex have been able to get away with it for so long.

In other Tether news, BeInCrypto has recently reported on the fact that only 104 Tether addresses are in control of close to 70% of the stablecoin’s circulating supply. This amounts to around $2.8 billion’s worth of USDT. There’s also the fact that many don’t hold the asset for very long, with the average HODL time being around 17.8 days before leaving a wallet.

What do you think about this latest minting? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Images are courtesy of Twitter, Shutterstock.