Crypto traders appeared to be ditching Tether’s USDT in droves Thursday, pushing key stablecoin pools on Curve Finance and Uniswap decentralized exchanges into heavy imbalances. Data showed that the USDT balance surged to 62% in the Curve 3pool, while USDC and DAI comprised roughly 19-19% of all assets in the pool. On Uniswap, the USDT-USDC trading pool saw a balance of $105.4 million USDT compared to just $6.5 million USDC. This suggests that investors are increasingly preferring to hold DAI or USDC instead of USDT, as there are more USDT sellers in the pool.
The imbalances indicate distress in the markets, as investors seek ways to ditch an asset en masse. This has happened before, such as during Terra’s implosion in May 2022 and the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in March. Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino hinted at potential foul play in an X post late Thursday, which some observers interpreted as a jab against crypto exchange giant Binance and its CEO Changpeng CZ Zhao.
The competitor cited in the post could be Hong Kong-based First Digital’s new stablecoin FDUSD, which Binance quickly embraced recently. The exchange listed the token on July 26 and is set to open Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) trading with FDUSD, waiving trading fees starting Friday. The market capitalization of FDUSD has since mushroomed to $258 million.