Tether mints $5B USDT on TRON as dollar demand rises

Tether minted more than $5 billion of USDT on the TRON network over two weeks, including a $1 billion issuance, and created $2 billion of USDT on Ethereum in three days in April. The issuances coincided with heavy buying in crypto markets, with Bitcoin trading above $80,000 as short positions were liquidated and institutional buyers absorbed more than five times the daily mined Bitcoin supply.

On-chain analytics show the TRON mints represented roughly 2.6% of Tether’s total supply at the time. Tether’s USDT supply stood at about $189.5 billion, equal to roughly 58.9% of the stablecoin market. The broader stablecoin sector reached $321 billion in April 2026, up from $310 billion at the start of the year.

Large customers commonly request blocks of newly minted stablecoins before deploying them for spot purchases, trading desk settlements or use in decentralized finance. USDT transfers move faster than bank wires, allowing tokens to be sent between exchanges and wallets outside bank hours.

Tether froze $344 million in USDT across two TRON wallets after receiving intelligence from the Office of Foreign Assets Control and U.S. law enforcement linking those addresses to unlawful activity. The wallets held about $212.9 million and $131.3 million at the time of the freeze. Tether has frozen more than $4.4 billion in assets tied to illegal activity since its inception, including roughly $2.1 billion connected to U.S. law enforcement.

Tether chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino wrote on X, “USD₮ is not a safe haven for illicit activity. When credible links to sanctioned entities or criminal networks are identified, we act immediately and decisively.” Ardoino reported that USDT processed 3.6 billion transfers under $100 in 2025.

Crypto payment card activity reached about $600 million in monthly card spending, six times the volume a year earlier. Total on-chain card transaction value was roughly $7.2 billion across 24 million transactions and 1.36 million wallet addresses; about 62.5% of those card settlements used USDT, and around 90% of card processing was handled through Visa. On-chain activity included about $348 million in transaction volume from the Solana ecosystem, and one platform recorded 660% month-on-month growth in transaction flow.

The minting and enforcement actions took place while demand increased for fast, programmable dollar tokens used for trading, lending, collateral and payments.