Every Friday we look at the week around TRON and USDT: what worried users, what happened, and what the energy for one USDT transfer cost across the platforms on the board. This is the first issue, covering 17–23 October 2026.
What worried users this week
Why did one USDT transfer burn 6.43 TRX?
The network math has not changed: with no energy, a USDT transfer burns 6.43 TRX, or 13.03 TRX if the receiving wallet has never held USDT. We checked it on chain on 23 October: 100 SUN per unit of energy, 64,285 energy per transfer to an existing holder, 130,285 to a new one. Renting the same energy for an hour cost 1.30 TRX on a typical scan this week.
Tether says its freezes cut Iran-linked USDT volume by 94%
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino posted the figure on 19 October. It is his own number and has not been independently verified. It follows a US Senate Democratic staff report in September on Iran-linked wallets that used USDT; Senator Blumenthal's questions to Cantor Fitzgerald about its ties to Tether were due on 23 October. For users, the practical point stays the same: USDT on TRON can be frozen by its issuer. — Analytics Insight, 20 Oct
Tampered hardware wallets: researchers estimate up to $93M lost
Genuine devices were tampered with and resold through resellers in Southeast Asia; on-chain researchers estimate up to $93M taken from more than 300 wallets, a figure Ledger has not confirmed. Ledger says its chips, operating system and servers were never compromised and asked resellers in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong to pause sales. If you bought a device from a reseller, set it up yourself and never use a seed phrase that came with it. — Bankless, 15 Oct
TRX supply grew 108 days in a row
CryptoSlate added up TRONSCAN's daily records: from 1 July to 16 October burns fell short of new issuance every single day, and supply grew by 148.6 million TRX. In 1–16 October, burns covered about 63.5% of what was issued. Burns shrink whenever a transfer is paid with staked or rented energy instead of burned TRX. — CryptoSlate, 17 Oct
Six stories of the week
18 OctJustin Sun says he cut 80–90% of the ETH he managed. In an interview published on 17 October he said he sold in late 2025, when ETH traded at $3,600–4,000, and bought US stocks, naming Nvidia and the Nasdaq-100. He kept part of the ETH as a base holding and did not reduce his Bitcoin. — TokenPost, 18 Oct
22 OctSun is “slightly more bearish” on Bitcoin. He cites quantum-era risk to today's cryptography and says buyers of spot Bitcoin ETFs have not priced it in. — ZyCrypto, 22 Oct
20 OctTRON says post-quantum signatures run on its Nile testnet. A TRON DAO press release, published as a sponsored post on The Block on 20 October, recaps Sun's talks at DAS Asia and TOKEN2049 Singapore on 7–8 October: end-to-end post-quantum signature support is deployed on the Nile testnet. Sun also said he expects AI agents paying in crypto to become the industry's biggest use case within five years. — TRON DAO release via The Block, 20 Oct
21 OctTether backs Bolivian fintech Peso. Tether led a pre-seed round in Peso, which brings USDT payments to food delivery, QR payments and bank transfers in Bolivia. The amount was not disclosed. — Cointelegraph, 21 Oct
22 OctMandatory node upgrade: java-tron v4.8.2.4. Node operators have to update. The release notes list two fixes: consistency in rare execution cases and contract storage handling in edge cases. They list no change to fees or to how transfers work. — java-tron releases, GitHub
22 Oct$2.21 trillion in stablecoins settled on TRON in Q3. A TRON DAO release citing Nansen and CoinDesk Data reports: about 73% of all stablecoin transfer volume went through TRON at the end of Q3, and USDT on TRON reached a record of just over $92.7 billion during the quarter. — TRON DAO release via GlobeNewswire, 22 Oct
Over the week TRX went from $0.3323 to $0.3298 (−0.8%, CoinGecko), and USDT on TRON from $92.90B to $92.64B (−0.3%, DefiLlama), 16 → 23 October.
What energy cost on the board
From 17 October 00:00 to 23 October 18:15 UTC the board took 599 scans, one every 15 minutes, across 20 platforms. Prices are for 65,000 energy for one hour, enough for one USDT transfer to a wallet that already holds USDT.
| Typical cheapest rent (median of the cheapest quote in each scan) | 1.30 TRX |
| Middle of the market (median quote) | 2.68 TRX |
| Burned with no energy | 6.43 TRX |
| Lowest quote of the week (CatFee, 06:00–08:00 UTC, every day) | 1.04 TRX |
| New wallet, 130,000 energy: typical cheapest rent / burned | 2.62 / 13.03 TRX |
| Typical cheapest rent on 12–16 October | 1.56 TRX |
CatFee had the lowest quote in 76% of scans and NETTS in 45% (when they tie, both count). In a typical scan the dearest quote was 3.65 times the cheapest.
The floor was lowest from 06:00 to 09:59 UTC and highest late in the UTC evening: on average about 1.06 TRX at 06:00 against 1.81 TRX at 23:00. If a transfer can wait, the morning UTC is when renting cost least this week.
Right now the cheapest 65k / 1 hour quote on the board is 1.82 TRX at CatFee.
Sources
- Analytics Insight, 20 Oct
- Bankless, 15 Oct
- CryptoSlate, 17 Oct
- TokenPost, 18 Oct
- ZyCrypto, 22 Oct
- TRON DAO release via The Block, 20 Oct
- Cointelegraph, 21 Oct
- java-tron releases, GitHub
- TRON DAO release via GlobeNewswire, 22 Oct
- CoinGecko: TRX
- DefiLlama: stablecoins on Tron
News items summarise the linked reports; figures attributed to companies are their own claims. Board figures come from our 15-minute scan archive. Prices change every few minutes — check the board before you rent. The next issue comes out on Friday, 30 October.