UPDATE (24 October 19:25 UTC): This article has been updated to include comments from a Bitfinex spokesman.
Shortly before 1:00 p.m. ET Wednesday, Tether, the company behind the dollar-linked stablecoin of the same name, announced via Twitter that it had destroyed 500 million tether (USDT) tokens.
Previously, those tokens were held in an account known as the "Tether treasury." The past few weeks have seen massive influxes of USDT to the Treasury, particularly after the cryptocurrency lost parity with the U.S. dollar last week amid questions about Tether's access to banking services.