Stablecoin issuance, market share, depegs, and reserve backing across USDT, USDC, DAI, and other major stablecoins.
Stablecoins are the plumbing underneath nearly every crypto market. They sit between traders exiting volatile positions, companies settling cross-border payments, and DeFi protocols looking for a dollar-denominated unit of account. When liquidity tightens, the flows show up here first: millions or even billions can leave the largest issuers in a single session, and pegs wobble by tenths of a cent before snapping back. For a crypto reader, this category is less about the tokens themselves and more about the signals they send about risk appetite, dollar funding and the bridge between traditional finance and on-chain settlement.
Zipp tracks the stablecoin beat day to day: issuance and redemption volumes across USDT, USDC, DAI and the fast-growing DeFi-native alternatives; weekly shifts in market share and on-chain liquidity; reserve backing, attestations and custodial arrangements with major banks; and any deviation from the dollar peg, however brief. We also follow the policy and infrastructure layer: how regulators in the US, Europe and Asia frame the asset class, which corporates issue or distribute stablecoins, and how payment networks and asset managers are wiring them into existing rails.
The past month has made the stakes obvious. Stablecoin supply contracted sharply during a US-Iran risk-off move, wiping out several billion dollars in a day. Treasurers at Standard Chartered and BNY opened new custodial and mint-and-burn channels for USDC. A new issuer, OUSD, launched with backing from BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard and Coinbase, sending Circle's share price down on the competitive threat. Bessent framed stablecoins and tokenisation as instruments of US economic power, while the Bank of Korea raised rates for the first time in three years, a reminder that the macro backdrop still drives the flows that land in this corner of the market.
The bank has not confirmed its final loss or a crypto link; Bitquery traced $108.8M in USDC withdrawals but could not connect them to Arkéa.
Existing securities laws and the GENIUS Act give tokenized markets and payment stablecoins a path forward, while broader legislation and DeFi protections face a tougher political road.
The move gives US businesses a direct route to send stablecoin payments to crypto wallets across a broad international footprint.
No users lost funds and dotUSD remained backed by USDT, but the breach exposed gaps in patch deployment and emergency response across Polkadot.
Higher USDC activity and Arc presale revenue lifted adjusted EBITDA, while Circle also moved to expand its cross-border payments reach.
USDC transaction volume jumped 49% to $13.9T, while falling reserve returns and ARC presale revenue shaped the quarter's earnings mix.
USDC transaction volume reached $13.9T, while Arc’s private token presale contributed $182M in revenue; Circle also disclosed a 5% workforce reduction.
USDC circulation grew 8% year over year, while Circle also reported a 5% workforce reduction and a planned Tazapay acquisition.
Per-call pricing on Base gives agents a way to access schedules across 400 cities without buying event data in bulk.
The launch would bring crypto trading onto Russia’s main bourse, but U.S. sanctions on the exchange and clearing house put USDT’s wallet-freezing policy in focus.
The model ties partner rewards to stablecoin holdings and flows, while Visa’s integration guidance signals a push to make OUSD usable across payment networks.
The freeze shows how quickly a stablecoin issuer can block funds, but $729M escaped and the fate of immobilized assets remains unresolved.
Persistent dollar-stablecoin activity could complicate efforts to restore domestic monetary influence, though the studies do not establish net capital flight or a direct effect on monetary control.
Tether’s reported Bitcoin position sits alongside $122.8B in direct U.S. Treasury bill holdings and a broader push into Bitcoin infrastructure.
More than $9M across nine digital assets has reportedly been immobilized, while wallets attributed to the attacker still hold about $46M in crypto.
The expansion links banking, custody and payouts across networks, but access is gated by business approval, identity checks and supported payment corridors.
Tether's $378.7M USDT freeze redirected laundering activity across multiple bridges, while more than $3B in stolen assets on other chains remains largely unmoved.
The sampled XRP/RLUSD pool barely changed, but order-book depth moved differently by trade direction and the cause of the supply decline remains unclear.
About $3B in affected assets was frozen through issuer controls, but freezing tokens does not automatically compensate victims.
Fixed release prices can speed up stablecoin receipts, but searchers may capture surplus when deposited assets are worth more than the set payment.
A stablecoin is a crypto token whose value is meant to track a reference price, usually 1 US dollar, backed by reserves such as cash, short-dated Treasuries or other liquid assets. Pegs are maintained through arbitrage: when the market price slips below $1, authorised participants redeem the token for dollars and remove supply; when it trades above $1, new tokens are minted and sold, pushing the price back down.
USDT (Tether) and USDC (Circle) are the two largest fiat-backed stablecoins, issued off-chain against reserves held by their respective companies and distributed across many blockchains. DAI is a crypto-backed stablecoin issued by the MakerDAO protocol, collateralised by over-collateralised crypto deposits locked in smart contracts rather than held by a centralised custodian.
Stablecoins are the main funding currency on trading venues, so large inflows signal fresh buying power ready to deploy into Bitcoin, Ether or altcoins, while large outflows indicate that traders are moving to the sidelines or off the chain entirely. Sudden drops in stablecoin market cap are also closely watched as an early read on risk-off conditions before they show up in equity or FX volatility.
A depeg occurs when a stablecoin trades meaningfully away from its target price, typically below $1 for dollar-pegged tokens. Short-lived dips of a fraction of a cent happen regularly during stress; deeper or longer-lasting depegs usually reflect reserve concerns, liquidity crunches or counterparty risk and can force redemptions, circuit breakers or, in extreme cases, issuer intervention.
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