Crypto exchange Binance and its CEO pleading guilty to money laundering charges sheds new light on why the company may have been moving billions worth of stablecoins in the weeks before the settlement was finalized.

A $3.9 billion Tether (USDT) transaction, completed on November 9, is uncannily close in value to the $4.3 billion penalty that Binance agreed to pay as part of its settlement.

Most of the money moved out of one Binance cold wallet (Binance-Cold 2) into another of its wallets (Binance 3). The cold wallet currently holds $6.6 billion worth of funds—$4 billion of it in USDT and the rest in various stablecoins like Decentralized USD (USDD), USDC, and TrueUSD (TUSD).

Meanwhile, the destination wallet now holds $3.2 billion in assets, most of it Tether’s USDT stablecoin. Binance has previously described its cold wallets as responsible for holding the bulk of company funds.

It’s unclear if Binance intends to use these funds to make good on the U.S. government’s fine, or if the company plans to redeem the USDT for U.S. dollars or another fiat currency. Binance did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.

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Author: Stacy Elliott

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