Traders Ditch USDT on Curve, Uniswap, Pushing Key Exchange Pools Into Imbalance

Crypto traders appeared to ditch Tether’s USDT in droves Thursday in key stablecoin pools on Curve Finance and Uniswap decentralized exchanges, pushing the pools into heavy imbalances.

Data shows that the USDT balance surged to 62% in the Curve 3pool, which consists of USDT, USDC and DAI stablecoins, while USDC and DAI comprised roughly 19-19% of all assets in the pool.

In the USDT-USDC trading pool on Uniswap, one of the most liquid pairs on the platform, the USDT balance stood at $105.4 million compared to just $6.5 million of USDC.

The current imbalances suggest that investors increasingly prefer to hold DAI or USDC instead of USDT, as there are more USDT sellers in the pool.

USDT’s price has been trading slightly below its $1 peg during the day, according to CoinDesk and CoinMarketCap data, a consequence of the selling pressure. The token dropped as low as 99.76 cents, per CoinDesk Indices.

The Curve and Uniswap pools are popular venues for traders to swap one stablecoin for another quickly. Most of the time, the tokens are in balance in the pools. Imbalances indicate distress in the markets as investors seek ways to ditch an asset en masse.

Similar imbalances happened during Terra’s implosion in May 2022 and this March when the Silicon Valley Bank crisis hit the USDC issuer Circle.

At the time of publication, the reason for the sales was uncertain.

UPDATE (August 3, 2023, 19:29 UTC): Adds background about imbalances.