Analysis of the stablecoin market after the USDC crisis: Decreased purchasing power, fiat stablecoins still favored

Recently, a well-known USD stablecoin encountered a liquidity crisis, causing market turbulence. Data shows that the price of this stablecoin once fell to $0.8788, with a daily decline of over 12%. This event also led to varying degrees of de-pegging in other stablecoins that accepted it as collateral.

Although the crisis was alleviated on March 13, this incident has still had a profound impact on the stablecoin market, prompting many reflections within the industry on the future development of stablecoins. Through the analysis of stablecoin market data from March 11 to 18, we identified the following key trends:

1. The market value of fiat stablecoins has generally risen, while the market value of stablecoins based on crypto assets has fallen significantly. This indicates that the market's confidence in fiat stablecoins remains relatively strong, whereas stablecoins based on crypto assets have been more negatively impacted.

2. The current market value of a certain stablecoin is only about 47% of another major stablecoin. On the other hand, the market value of a certain stablecoin has increased by over 54%, the largest increase. The market values of several other stablecoins have also increased.

3. The exchange's stablecoin stock is approximately $21.461 billion, down 11.02% from when the crisis broke out, indicating a rapid outflow of funds.

4. The total locked value of major stablecoins in the three major DeFi protocols decreased from $3.464 billion to $3.297 billion, a decline of approximately 4.83%.

5. During the crisis, the total trading volume of stablecoin trading pairs on decentralized exchanges skyrocketed to $23.17 billion, far exceeding normal levels. The trading among three major stablecoins constituted the main flow of funds in DeFi during the crisis, reflecting users' confidence in fiat stablecoins.

From the perspective of stablecoin types, the highest market capitalization is still held by fiat stablecoins, but the largest number among high market cap stablecoins are those backed by crypto asset collateral. It is noteworthy that, aside from Ethereum, there are also stablecoins with relatively large market capitalizations on multiple other public chains, which has a positive significance for the DeFi ecosystem development of various public chains.

This crisis has also affected the purchasing power of stablecoins. As of March 18, the stablecoin supply index (SSR) is approximately 4, an increase of about 30% compared to when the crisis broke out. This is related to the recent rebound in Bitcoin prices, but it also reflects a decline in actual purchasing power, bringing more uncertainty to the market's return to a bull market.

In the lending market, the crisis has had varying degrees of impact on the borrowing and lending rates of each stablecoin. Currently, most stablecoins' borrowing and lending rates have returned to the levels seen at the beginning of the month.

Overall, although this crisis has had a certain impact on the stablecoin market, regulated fiat stablecoins still demonstrate strong risk resistance. This is both a reason for users to maintain confidence in them and an important factor for regulatory agencies' increasing attention to stablecoins. In the future, how to strike a balance between decentralization and risk control will be an important issue facing the stablecoin market.