This is the weekly cost edition: what it cost to move USDT this week, what it should have cost, and where the arithmetic moved. Fees did not move for a fifth consecutive week — re-checked against all eleven official fee pages on September 21 — and energy held its long low band at 26–30 SUN. The one number that changed was TRX, up 1.2% to $0.3425 on the week.
Which means the interesting arithmetic this week is not on the rails at all. CoinEx told its users on September 14–15 that it is closing, and put a 5% monthly fee on any USDT still sitting there after December 22. We run that number below, because a 5% monthly fee is the most expensive thing we have had to cost out all quarter — and because the same logic applies to every balance you leave on any venue.
📋The Reference Table: USDT TRC20 Fees at 11 Venues
| Exchange | TRC20 Fee | Minimum | vs $1 floor |
|---|---|---|---|
| OKX | 1.0 USDT | 2 USDT | At floor |
| Binance | 1.0 USDT | 10 USDT | At floor |
| Bybit | 1.0 USDT | 10 USDT | At floor |
| KuCoin | 1.0 USDT | 10 USDT | At floor |
| Bitget | 1.0 USDT | 5 USDT | At floor |
| MEXC | 1.0 USDT | 2 USDT | At floor |
| Gate.io | 1.5 USDT | 10 USDT | +50% |
| Crypto.com | 1.5 USDT | 10 USDT | +50% |
| HTX | 2.3 USDT | 1 USDT | +130% |
| Coinbase | 2.4 USDT | 1 USDT | +140% |
| Kraken | 2.5 USDT | 5 USDT | +150% |
⚡Energy: 26 SUN to Rent, 100 SUN to Burn
The burn price for energy remains 100 SUN (Proposal #104, effective August 29, 2025). A standard USDT transfer — ~65,000 energy to an address that already holds USDT — burns about 6.5 TRX ≈ $2.23 at this week's verified TRX reference of ~$0.3425. An on-chain measurement published this month put the real figure at 64,285 energy — the USDT contract carries TRON's maximum dynamic-energy surcharge — which lands within ~1% of our model. The first transfer to a fresh address costs roughly double (~130,285 energy ≈ $4.46).
Rented energy held its long band: 26 SUN at the best surveyed venue, with the market spanning 26–30 SUN. The same transfer at 26 SUN costs about 1.69 TRX ≈ $0.58 — ~74% cheaper than burning. TRON held ~3-second blocks with no congestion all week, and neither Proposal #107's activation nor SUN.io's new 99% energy subsidy inside its own products changed the network-level burn price.
Takeaway: unchanged for a fifth week — and the only movement worth noting is that a stronger TRX makes the burn slightly more expensive while making the rental saving slightly more valuable.
📆The Annual Picture
Exchange side: withdrawing from Kraken instead of a $1-floor venue costs 1.5 USDT extra per withdrawal — $78/year at one withdrawal per week, ~$550/year at daily withdrawals. Pay it only when the funds start as fiat on Kraken; otherwise the floor venues win.
Network side: renting energy instead of burning saves 4.8 TRX per transfer — about $85/year at one withdrawal-plus-transfer per week (4.8 × $0.3425 × 52). The saving scales linearly with volume, which is why batch services and payroll payers feel it first.
Combined: the worst reasonable path (Kraken + ERC20 + burn) versus the best (floor venue + TRC20 + rent) differs by roughly $3.15 per cycle.
The other side of the ledger: leaving a balance on a closing venue is no longer a hypothetical cost. A 5% monthly custody fee compounds to a ~46% loss over twelve months and ~64% over the twenty months until CoinEx's claim deadline of August 22, 2028. Against $78/year of fee optimisation, that is sixty times the stakes — a useful reminder of which risks are worth engineering against first.
🔀What Changed / What Did Not
- Changed: TRX rose about 1.2% on the week to a $0.3425 close (Sep 20), lifting the no-energy burn from ~$2.20 to ~$2.23 and the combined cycle saving from $3.12 to $3.15.
- Changed: the venue landscape, in kind rather than in price — CoinEx announced it is closing, with withdrawals ending 02:00 UTC on December 22, 2026 and a 5% monthly fee on unwithdrawn USDT.
- Unchanged: every withdrawal fee at all eleven tracked venues (fifth consecutive zero-change week), the 26–30 SUN energy band, and the 100 SUN burn price.
- Confirmed: Proposal #107 is in effect and adds TVM Prague and Osaka capability without touching any fee or energy parameter — capability, not cost.
- Watch: Binance pauses all deposits and withdrawals platform-wide from 06:00 UTC on September 22 for roughly an hour; and if TRON's dynamic-energy surcharge on the USDT contract ever eases, the no-energy burn could halve while rental savings compress proportionally.
Fifth week, same route: OKX + TRC20 (or any floor venue) with rented energy — ~$1.58 all-in per $1,000. The optimal path is unchanged, and it is no longer the most expensive number in the week: a 5% monthly custody fee on a forgotten balance costs more in one month than this site's entire fee-optimisation advice saves in a year.