There is a strong correlation between Bitcoin’s climb past $100,000 and the increasing supply of Tether’s stablecoin, USDT. This was highlighted by Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino in an interview with The Block.

Ardoino revealed that over the past 20 days, the stablecoin’s market capitalization has grown by approximately $16 billion.

He attributed this to capital inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs and significant purchases of Bitcoin by MicroStrategy and other institutional players.

Michael Saylor’s company recently acquired an additional 15,400 BTC for about $1.5 billion, bringing its total Bitcoin reserves to 402,100 BTC.

Simultaneously, Bitcoin-based ETF issuers have seen substantial growth. The IBIT fund from BlackRock now holds over 500,000 BTC. According to SoSoValue, U.S.-based ETF issuers collectively own 5.54% of Bitcoin’s total supply.

Bitcoin’s price has increased by nearly 49% in the last 30 days, as per CoinGecko.

“This required liquidity injection from traditional finance into crypto trading. Such massive inflows ultimately convert into USDT, which is why its market capitalization surged so quickly,” Ardoino explained.

Over the past month, Tether’s supply grew by ~12.5%, reaching $135 billion. In comparison, the supply of Circle’s USDC increased by nearly 14% but still lags significantly behind at $40.4 billion in market capitalization.