Unusually Large Amount of USDT Sold and USDC Bought on Huobi: What’s the Reason?

Cryptocurrency analysis firm Kaiko recently pointed out some strange trading activity on cryptocurrency exchange Huobi, now known as HTX.

In their latest report, Kaiko analysts focused on this unusual activity, HTX’s relationship with Poloniex and the USDT-USDC trading pair.

Unlike other popular crypto exchanges, Poloniex has never surpassed the highest monthly volume figures set during the 2017 craze, peaking in May 2022 with a monthly volume of just over $10 billion.

However, in August 2023, which has been a low volume month for most exchanges since 2020, Poloniex recorded a whopping $20 billion in volume. This increase did not coincide with any major changes that could affect trading volume to this extent.

While researching, Kaiko noticed significant USDT depegs (loss of 1 dollar peg) on HTX’s USDT-USDC pair. After further investigation, it became clear that this was due to heavy net selling of USDT in exchange for USDC. A net 350 million USDT has been sold for USDC since the beginning of July. This trend has been extremely stable; There were only a few short interruptions in sales, each lasting less than 24 hours.

Kaiko’s data revealed that two wallets linked to HTX transferred approximately 400 million USDC to Binance since early July; The first wallet stopped transferring on September 24 and was quickly replaced by the second wallet.

The final potential piece of the puzzle comes from a report from ChainArgos on stUSDT, a “stake” version of USDT launched by JustLend that is expected to generate returns by investing deposited USDT tokens in real-world assets (RWAs).

However, ChainArgos claims that these tokens do not generate staking income and that USDT tokens are exchanged for stUSDT, resembling a promissory note. According to ChainArgos, the actual USDT tokens were sent to Justin Sun’s staking platform JustLend. HTX currently holds $400 million worth of stUSDT.

*This is not investment advice.

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