On Monday, the crypto economy experienced significant market activity with $183.85 billion in global trade volume over 24 hours, with a large portion of those trades involving stablecoins. USDC traded near parity with the U.S. dollar, and several stablecoins, including tether and BUSD, sold at premiums. Tether reached a high of $1.04 per unit and BUSD rose to $1.03 per coin during the morning trading sessions (ET).
Small Handful of Stablecoin Assets Trade for Premiums as USDC Closes $1 Parity Gap
On Monday, stablecoins experienced significant trade volumes after USDC had difficulty maintaining its peg to the U.S. dollar over the weekend. This caused five other stablecoins to depeg just below the $1 value. Today, USDC has almost closed the gap and is trading at $0.99 per coin, but traders looking to exchange USDC for tether (USDT), binance usd (BUSD), or another stablecoin may have to pay a premium.
Currently, tether (USDT) is trading at two cents above the U.S. dollar, with an early morning trading price of $1.04 per coin. Some tether (USDT) spikes went as high as $1.076 per USDT on Monday. BUSD saw a similar premium at $1.03 per unit, and other stablecoins, such as TUSD and DAI, are also experiencing higher prices based on the exchange used by traders. At $1.02 per unit and with 72.55 billion USDT in circulation, the additional two cents brings USDT’s market cap up to $74.23 billion at the time of writing.
Of the $183.85 billion in global trade volume, USDT accounts for $94.27 billion or 51.27% of the volume. USDC has a global trade volume of $10.79 billion, representing 5.87% of the $183 billion in trades during the last 24 hours. Bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) have also captured a significant amount of the day’s trading volume. Bitcoin (BTC) rose 16.6% against the U.S. dollar on Monday and saw $70.22 billion in swaps, while ethereum (ETH) increased 12.9% and commands $68.13 billion in global trading volume.
With the small premiums and USDC returning to $1 parity, the market capitalization of the stablecoin economy is currently $136.25 billion. While stablecoin premiums and this weekend’s depegging event may not be beneficial for some traders, the discrepancies benefit stablecoin arbitrageurs significantly. Furthermore, Curve, the decentralized exchange (dex) focused on stablecoin trading, has recorded $1.02 billion in trade volume and is the second-largest dex by trade volume on Monday.
What are your thoughts on the current stablecoin market and the impact of recent premiums and depegging events on traders and investors? Share your thoughts about this subject in the comments section below.