Polygon’s 8 million USDT0 holders face scrutiny as 58% of growth matches scam patterns
Key Summary
Polygon's USDT0 holder count has surged, but a blockchain analytics firm has found that 58% of growth matches scam patterns, raising questions about the quality of adoption figures. The investigation also revealed shrinking balances and suspected scam activity, despite the network's broader push into stablecoin payments.
Polygon's Growing Stablecoin Payments Raise Concerns Over Scam Activity
Investigation Finds 58% of Growth Matching Scam Patterns
An investigation by Bitquery found that addresses matching scam patterns accounted for 58% of the net growth in Polygon's USDT0 holders since August 2025.
The findings challenge Polygon's recent celebration of surpassing 8.1 million USDT0 holder addresses, the highest among blockchains included in a Token Terminal comparison.
Scam Activity and Address Poisoning
Roughly 998,000 of the 1.71 million addresses added over the preceding 13 months exhibited patterns associated with address-poisoning scams.
Address poisoning involves scammers creating wallet addresses that resemble legitimate payment destinations and sending tiny transactions to potential victims.
Shrinking Balances and Suspected Scam Activity
The growth came as USDT0 supply on Polygon fell 41%, from $1.35 billion to $798 million.
Addresses holding at least $10 also declined 42%, from approximately 1.24 million to 720,000.
Bitquery found that 48% of holders controlled less than one cent, while 65% had neither sent nor received the token during the preceding year.
Polygon's Payments Ambitions
The findings reflect Polygon's August 2025 upgrade from bridged USDT to native USDT0, which preserved existing token balances and contract addresses.
About 67% of current holders first received Tether before the upgrade.
Polygon's payments ambitions face a measurement problem as the network increasingly positions itself as a stablecoin payments network.