Tether’s Depegging Incident Triggers Market Instability

On June 15th, Tether’s USDT, a popular stablecoin, experienced a significant detachment from its peg, leading to a cascade of effects throughout the market. Despite various explanations to justify this depegging event, its impact remained consistently impactful, as evidenced by multiple metrics.

When news of the USDT depeg broke, Santiment’s crucial metrics revealed a negative market reaction with increased activity. Santiment’s Network Realized Profit/Loss metric highlighted significant instability for the stablecoin, with a realized loss exceeding $2 million. This indicated a surge in traders and hodlers disposing of their tokens while the asset’s market value dipped. However, at the time of writing, the situation had slightly improved, with a realized profit of approximately $753,000.

In addition, the supply of Tether on exchanges experienced a decline following the depeg event, falling below 18.7%—a level last observed in May 2020. The exchange flow balance surged, surpassing 120 million, indicating heightened unease among traders. However, the balance has since reduced to around 4 million.

Despite the recent depegging incident, data from Coin Market Cap showed that the dominance of USDT remained intact—for now. It maintained its position as the stablecoin with the largest market capitalization, surpassing $83 billion. Furthermore, its trading volume over the past 24 hours stood at over $21 billion, significantly outpacing other stablecoins.

The overall stablecoin market capitalization was approximately $128.5 billion, underscoring the continued dominance of USDT despite its recent challenges.

While USDT’s slight dip below its peg is not unprecedented, the recent incident attracted more attention due to prevailing market sentiment and regulatory actions against certain exchanges. The aftermath of the FTX crash also contributed to the overall unease in the market.

The upcoming days will be crucial in determining how Tether responds to these events, as it will significantly influence the dispersion of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) surrounding the stablecoin. Market participants will closely monitor Tether’s actions and announcements to gauge the stability and prospects of this influential stablecoin.