Stablecoin operator Tether has minted 5 billion USDT tokens by mistake, and has burned them all afterwards, as reported by Whale Alert.

Whale Alert — a Twitter user devoted to revealing major crypto transactional activities – has claimed that Poloniex – a US-based crypto exchange platform – has sent 50 million USDT tokens to the Tether Treasury, using the Omni protocol on the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain. Whale Alert later on noted that Tether Treasury minted 5 billion USDT tokens on the Tron blockchain, and has subsequently burned the sum of fund.

Later on, Tether minted 50 million USDT on the similar chain, while burning another 4.5 billion USDT more, and ultimately sent 4.5 billion USDT on the Tron blockchain to a wallet that is considered to be in the possession of Poloniex

Paolo Ardoino – COO of Tether – took to Twitter to elaborate that Tether initially wanted to make a swap of 50 million Omni-based USDT tokens to the Tron blockchain, but has made a mistake in the process.

“Paolo is correct – this occurred while Poloniex was conducting a USDT chain swap with the help of Tether. An incorrect amount of USDT was accidentally minted, and this has since been resolved to the intended value.” Poloniex confirmed via Twitter.