Tether Usage Shifts To Day Trading Due To China Crypto Ban.
2021-08-04 | Mike Hallen
The Tether stablecoin [
USDT] daily usage on the Ethereum blockchain has shifted slightly later
within the day from Asian business hours toward European and United States market hours, possibly
due to China’s crackdown on cryptocurrency trading and USDT users’ migration to other blockchains,
in line with an official report suggests.
Last year, most Tether activity on Ethereum happened between 2:00 and 14:00 coordinated GMT,
and within that point,
the period from 6:00 to 8:00 UTC was the busiest,
consistent with the report by blockchain analysis firm Coin Metrics. This year, however, there has been less usage from 2:00 to 6:00 UTC and more from 15:00 to 20:00 UTC.
Investors can trade crypto 24 hours, seven days
every week, but native
stock market times
are often used as a proxy for when traders in any given region are active.
Several factors could have contributed to the shift of USDT’s daily usage pattern on
Ethereum,
consistent with Coin Metrics, along with that some trading activity has shifted to other blockchains
that offer lower fees than Ethereum,
like Tron and Solana.
Also, as China reiterated its crypto ban
and began cracking down on crypto mining in May, the migration of cryptocurrency miners and investors may have led to a
drop in Asia-based USDT activity. That migration, however, wouldn’t explain the changes before May, Coin Metrics outlined.
It’s also possible that that Tether on Ethereum is increasingly
getting used as collateral in decentralized finance [DeFi] protocols.
Comparatively, the rival dollar-linked stablecoin USDC sees most usage from 14:00 to 22:00 UTC, in line with United States market hours. Bitcoin [
BTC] and Ethereum [
ETH] activity are more equally distributed throughout the day.
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