$5M USDT Moved From Tether Treasury to Binance as Loans Run Dry

Another batch of USDT has just been withdrawn from Tether Treasury and been deposited into Binance. The move was reported on by Whale Alerts (@whale_alert) earlier today.

5,000,000 #USDT (5,034,397 USD) transferred from Tether Treasury to #Binance

Tx: https://t.co/UduiRHpQbe

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) February 13, 2020

The replies were overwhelmingly optimistic that the fresh deposit of 5,000,000 USDT would further extend the bullish momentum. Bitcoin today has whipped around the $10,250 price point and is down -0.80 percent on the daily, at the time of this writing.

Binance Runs out of Tether

The momentary market slowdown may be due to Binance’s own services. As BeInCrypto reported recently, the exchange has been suffering from a USDT shortage which has prevented loans from being given out. Many are reporting that they are unable to place BTC longs due to the shortage.  As of now, BTC/USD longs are their highest level in a long time on rival Bitfinex. Bear in mind, this spike in Bitfinex longs has occurred while Binance has been unable to provide extra liquidity for its margin trading. One can imagine that many major traders are being kept on the sidelines due to the USDT shortage on Binance. Changpeng Zhao (CZ) recently took to Twitter to dispel any concerns and make it clear that the exchange was working on it.

There is a slight delay in the order book display across some trading pairs. Team are working on it. Funds are #SAFU.

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) February 13, 2020

However, many criticized CZ for focusing too much on listings, gimmicks, and more ways to trade and not improving on the basics. Binance’s user interface is still laggy and the USDT shortage proves that the team is not focusing enough on the actual customer. Crypto Michael (@CryptoMichNL) voiced his criticisms to CZ in a reply tweet.

Is this finally a moment you consider improving your UI first, before adding more stuff?

UI first, rest after. There’s no point in having 50x leverage if you get rekt by a lag in process of orders.

— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) February 13, 2020

Bitcoin Bulls Wait for More Liquidity

Could this $5M USDT be enough to placate demand? The trading volume on Binance’s margin trading platform is many times larger than the $5M deposited. However, we also don’t know the specifics of how much USDT is needed. We can likely continue to see the USDT shortage persist for the coming days as the exchange figures out a proper solution. Hopefully, the market’s bullish momentum can wait for this to be resolved.