Polygon's surging USDT0 holder count masks shrinking balances and suspected scam activity amid its broader push into stablecoin payments.

An Oct. 7 investigation by blockchain analytics firm Bitquery found that addresses matching scam patterns accounted for 58% of the net growth in Polygon's USDT0 holders since August 2025, raising questions about the quality of adoption figures promoted by the network.

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.

According to Bitquery, roughly 998,000 of the 1.71 million addresses added over the preceding 13 months exhibited patterns associated with address-poisoning scams.

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.

The investigation also identified approximately 1.42 million addresses matching an address-poisoning pattern, with sample-based verification supporting an estimate of 1.1 million scam look-alikes.

Address poisoning involves scammers creating wallet addresses that resemble legitimate payment destinations and sending tiny transactions to potential victims, hoping they mistakenly copy the fraudulent addresses when transferring funds.

These addresses can retain fractional token balances, allowing them to count as holders. Bitquery cautioned that its classification was probabilistic and did not quantify losses from the suspected scams.

The findings reflect Polygon's August 2025 upgrade from bridged USDT to native USDT0, which preserved existing token balances and contract addresses.

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