Tether mints $5B USDT in two weeks as Bitcoin tops $80K

Tether minted $5 billion USDT across the Ethereum and Tron networks over a two-week period, including a $1 billion issuance on Tron on May 4. The company’s total USDT supply is now $189.5 billion.

An onchain analytics service flagged the $1 billion mint on Tron. Holdings on Tron recently rose above $86 billion, representing nearly half of Tether’s global USDT supply across all supported blockchains.

Tether’s USDT supply of $189.5 billion accounted for 58.9% of the broader stablecoin market, which reached $321 billion in April 2026. The stablecoin market measured about $310 billion at the start of the year.

Large-scale minting by Tether generally follows requests from institutional buyers seeking liquidity to deploy on exchanges, trading desks or decentralized finance platforms. Earlier in April, Tether minted $2 billion on Ethereum over three days.

The two-week minting window coincided with a rise in Bitcoin’s price. Bitcoin climbed above $80,000 on the same day as the $1 billion Tron issuance. The trading session that day recorded mass liquidations of short positions and institutional buyers taking on more than 500% of the daily mined bitcoin supply.

The $5 billion minted in two weeks represents about 2.6% of Tether’s current total supply. Onchain observers have tracked similar concentrated minting windows in prior cycles.