Tether printed two billion dollar-backed tokens last week, a new record for the leading stablecoin project.
Over 24.6 billion tethers now circulate across Ethereum, Tron and Bitcoin’s Omni Layer, per data from Coin Metrics, up from 4.8 billion one year ago. 
The growth comes from a variety of factors, said Sam Trabucco, quantitative trader at Alameda Research. “Some [people] don’t put trust in their local banks or currencies,” he said, in which case using USDT is the “most liquid USD-like exposure the market has access to.” 
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Growth also comes when traders start to “aggressively sell BTC into USDT” or vice versa, Trabucco noted, which can cause the dollar-pegged token to temporarily trade above or below its peg.
For nearly all of January so far, USDT has traded slightly above $1 until early Monday morning when it dropped below the mark, per market data from U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken. 
Per Tether and Bitfinex…