Incidentally, according to coinmarketcap another 600,000,000 in Tethers just came into existence about four hours ago. Tethers are now listed at $0.99.
That happened right around 1AM UTC January 28th. These Tether were printed a week to two weeks ago. Now all 2 1/4 billion "granted" Tether are circulating.
For the record, Tether broke downward out of its trading range immediately. BTC started spiking up three hours later. The mempool saw a (probably statistically insignificant) increase in transactions an hour after that (5AM UTC), especially in the 5 to 10 sat/B range.