Polygon’s 8M USDT0 holders questioned over scam patterns

Blockchain analytics firm Bitquery found that 58% of Polygon’s net growth in USDT0 holder addresses since August 2025 matched patterns linked to address-poisoning scams. The finding concerns Polygon’s reported milestone of 8.1 million USDT0 holders.

Bitquery counted 1.71 million addresses added during the 13-month period. About 998,000 showed scam-like behavior. The analysis also identified roughly 1.42 million addresses that matched an address-poisoning pattern and estimated, based on sample checks, that about 1.1 million could be scam look-alikes.

Address poisoning involves sending small transactions from wallet addresses that resemble legitimate payment destinations. Scammers hope users will later copy those addresses from their transaction histories and send funds to them. The addresses can retain small token balances and count as holders.

The classification was probabilistic and did not measure losses linked to the suspected scams. Bitquery found that 48% of Polygon’s USDT0 holders controlled less than 1 cent, while 65% had neither sent nor received the token during the previous year.

The holder increase occurred while USDT0’s supply on Polygon fell 41%, from $1.35 billion to $798 million. The number of addresses holding at least $10 dropped 42%, from about 1.24 million to 720,000.

The figures relate to Polygon’s August 2025 transition from bridged USDT to Tether’s native USDT0. The transition preserved existing token balances and contract addresses. About 67% of current holders first received Tether before the upgrade.

Polygon is building a stablecoin payments business focused on wallet transfers, payment processing and cross-border settlement. Recent analytics data showed that Polygon processed more wallet-to-wallet stablecoin transactions over a seven-day period than Ethereum’s mainnet, and more than Base and Arbitrum combined. The measure excluded decentralized finance contracts, although automated transfers linked to address poisoning could still contribute to the total.

DeFiLlama data put Polygon’s total stablecoin supply at about $2.93 billion. USD Coin accounted for approximately $1.62 billion, or 55.29%, while USDT represented about $795 million, or 27%.

Bitquery’s analysis covered address activity and balances. It did not determine whether genuine USDT0 payment volumes on Polygon had declined.