XRP spikes 12%, crashes on fake BlackRock filing; Tether has printed $4 billion USDT in the last 4 weeks; THORChain becomes 3rd largest decentralized exchange
XRP Spikes 12%, Crashes on Fake BlackRock Filing
XRP experienced a sudden spike followed by a rapid decline in response to a misleading filing related to a purported XRP trust from BlackRock. The misleading information, which suggested that the asset manager was in the process of launching an XRP exchange-traded product, led to a 12% spike in the value of XRP.
This spike occurred within 30 minutes of the news breaking on 13 November, according to Twitter users who noticed a Delaware filing for the “iShares XRP Trust”, which was seen as a potential precursor to an exchange-traded fund (ETF).
However, the excitement was short-lived as the gains were completely wiped out within the next half hour. The filing was exposed as a fake by Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, who contacted BlackRock directly to confirm the misinformation.
Balchunas speculated that the fraudulent filing on the Delaware corporation’s website may have been orchestrated by someone impersonating BlackRock managing director Daniel Schwieger. Bitcoin analyst Dylan LeClair was among the first to report the news, with Balchunas and The Block also sharing the now-deleted listing.
This incident comes against the backdrop of BlackRock’s recent move to broaden its focus beyond Bitcoin, as evidenced by its filing for a Spot Ether ETF on 9 November. Despite the fraudulent XRP listing, analyst Seyffart stressed the legitimacy of the spot Ether ETF, which was officially confirmed by a 19b-4 filing from Nasdaq with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Tether has printed $4 billion USDT in the last 4 weeks!
Stablecoin firm Tether broke a new record by minting 4 billion USDT last month.
According to blockchain data provider Whale Alert, Tether minted another 1 billion Tether on the Tron blockchain on 10 November. According to Whale Alert data, the latest USDT minting came just days after Tether minted 1 billion USDT on the Ethereum network on 9 November, in addition to 2 billion USDT minted in two batches on the Tron blockchain on 3 November and 19 October.
Tether chief technology officer and new CEO Paolo Ardoino commented on the Whale Alert data on X (formerly Twitter). He stated that the last 1 billion USDT transaction on the Tron network was a “USDT inventory replenishment” transaction and said:
“Note that this is an authorised but unissued transaction, meaning that this amount will be used as inventory for future minting requests and cross-chain swaps.”
The recently minted USDT accounted for a significant portion of the total amount of USDT minted this year. According to Whale Alert data, Tether printed 22.75 billion USDT in 2023. Of this, 13 billion, or 57 per cent, was printed on the Tron blockchain. The remaining 9.75 billion USDT was printed on the Ethereum blockchain.
Tether has continued to actively print new USDT over the past year. According to Whale Alert data, in March 2023, Tether printed exactly 9 billion USDT, in addition to the 3 billion printed the previous month. The stablecoin firm also printed a significant amount of USDT in mid-summer, minting 3.75 billion USDT between 12 June and 12 July.
Actively launching new stablecoins, Tether is also burning some coins. Tether burned 1.2 billion USDT on the Tron blockchain on 22 August. According to Whale Alert, the stablecoin firm previously burned 3.1 billion Tron USDT in June and 2 billion Ethereum USDT in February.
According to Ardoino, in addition to the minting of new coins, the firm is preparing to announce five more new projects in 2024, and “a few of them could completely eliminate some popular Web2 centralized services.”
THORChain becomes 3rd largest decentralized exchange
Asset exchange protocol THORChain had the third largest trading volume among decentralized exchanges last week, helped by users attracted by the high yield of its native token RUNE.
According to DefiLlama, THORChain’s trading volume reached $1.32 billion last week, ranking third behind Uniswap and PancakeSwap’s $10.85 billion and $2.77 billion, respectively.
THORChain ranked second with a trading volume of $334.3 million over the past 24 hours. THORChain’s trading volume was $50 million more than PancakeSwap, which ranked third.
According to CoinGecko, RUNE, on the other hand, increased by 51 percent in the past week and by more than 200 percent in the past 30 days.
THORChain core developer Chad Barraford predicted that THORChain would surpass Curve Finance by the end of 2023. This happened before Barraford’s prediction.
Because users on THORChain can exchange ether for native Bitcoin, the platform is considered a multi-chain version of Uniswap. THORSwap is a decentralized exchange powered by the THORChain protocol.
The platform offers an annual rate of return (APR) of around 44 percent, but some liquidity pools offer higher rates, such as Bitcoin and rune parity, which offers an APR of over 353 percent.
In the 24 hours between 11 and 12 November, THORChain accounted for almost 2 percent of total spot Bitcoin trading volume, or $224 million.
