Tether mints $500M worth of USDT on Solana in under one hour

Tether just pushed $500 million in freshly minted USDT onto the Solana blockchain in less than 60 minutes. The massive mint adds to Solana’s existing USDT supply, which currently sits at approximately $3.8 billion to $4 billion in native SPL-standard tokens. While that’s a meaningful chunk of stablecoin liquidity, it still trails far behind the Tron network, which remains the dominant highway for USDT circulation globally. Why Solana, and why now Tether first deployed USDT on Solana back in September 2020, betting early on the network’s high throughput and low transaction costs. The timing of this particular mint is worth noting. Circle, the issuer of rival stablecoin USDC, minted $250 million on Solana around the same period. When two of the largest stablecoin issuers are simultaneously flooding the same chain with fresh supply, it usually means one thing: someone needs liquidity, and they need it fast. Tether has also been active on other chains during this period, executing significant transfers including a $500 million USDT movement to Binance via Solana. The company continues to operate across multiple blockchains simultaneously, with Tron and Ethereum remaining its largest ve...