Cheatsheet: Stablecoins mint $7.7B since bitcoin ETFs, beating inflows

A crypto bull market demands billions more dollars on blockchains. Luckily, stablecoin issuers are on deck

article-image

Art by Crystal Le

share

This is Cheatsheet, a primer on what’s happening in crypto today.

AI has taken over while bitcoin takes a breather. 

Three of today’s five best performers at the top end of the market are AI-related: fetch.ai (FET) and singularityNET (AGIX) are up almost 20%, followed by Bittensor (TAO) with 13%.

Axelar (AXL), a layer-1 blockchain built for interoperability, has exploded 41% following the announcement of a listing on Binance. AXL suddenly pumped from $1.54 to as much as $2.64 overnight, before retracing to $2.19 as of 7:00 am ET. 

Solana (SOL) meanwhile is the only megacap crypto in the green for the day, up 4.7%. Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) are about square, now at $62,400 and $3,440.

Memecoins pepe (PEPE) and bonk (BONK) have beaten most other cryptocurrencies with over $1 billion market cap over the past week, having more than doubled in price.

What’s happening on-chain

Nearly $7.5 billion net has flowed into bitcoin spot ETFs since they went live in the US last month — but stablecoins have attracted even more.

  • Bigger than ETFs: USD stablecoins have printed over $7.7 billion fresh tokens since BlackRock et al. got the greenlight, and nearly $11 billion year-to-date.
  • Circle bottomed: Tether and USDC minted nearly all of it, with Circle issuing more stablecoins than at any point over the past two years.
  • Bankman-who?: There’s now $141 billion in stables across crypto, just shy of pre-FTX levels.

Stablecoin issuers like Circle and Tether accept cash in exchange for new tokens, minting them when fresh capital comes in. They generally burn tokens when redeemed for dollars, so shrinking supplies can indicate lower interest in crypto markets overall, and vice versa.

Outside of the big two, Binance-adopted FDUSD has added the most supply this year with about $1.5 billion, an 83% boost. TrueUSD, struggling to maintain its peg, fell out of favor alongside Gemini Dollar, both bleeding more than $1 billion. Stablecoins in total make up about 6% of the crypto market.

Tether is still by far the most traded stablecoin on centralized exchanges. USDC is favored on DEXs and other apps on Solana and Ethereum. PayPal debuted its own offering last year, which has quickly gathered over $300 million in supply (and a few DeFi integrations).

Read more: Tether made nearly $1B in monthly profit during Q4

  • DEX record: Daily DEX volume hit its highest in over a year with $8.8 billion yesterday (31% of all exchange volume). On-chain derivatives are seeing about double that, at record highs.
  • Solana Spring: Solana platforms Orca, Raydium and Lifinity are growing faster than BSC’s PancakeSwap. 
  • Most since December: Solana DeFi overall saw almost $2 billion in volume yesterday.
Stablecoin issuers were busy minting coins as bitcoin dipped in late January

Crypto business

Marathon, the largest public bitcoin miner by market value, took a beating yesterday amid a correction in crypto stocks more severe than bitcoin itself.

  • What goes up: MARA fell more than 15.5% between the day session and after hours trade (still up by half over the past month).
  • Bit by bitcoin: Rig maker Canaan alongside miners Argo Blockchain and TeraWulf fell more than 10%.
  • The system works: MicroStrategy persists as a top performer after gaining 4% overall.

Coinbase traded flat and is still in the top-three performing crypto stocks in the past month, after miner ClearSpark and bitcoin hoarder MicroStrategy.

Brian Armstrong’s firm has made serious moves to diversify revenue from transaction fees: staking as a service, stablecoins and its own Ethereum layer-2 network, Base, have all helped. 

But Coinbase stock is still behaving like a bitcoin proxy, more correlated than at any point over the past 13 months. COIN’s 30-day correlation coefficient is currently triple what it was this time last year, after spending some of October and January entirely uncoupled, per TradingView.

Read more: Marathon Digital ready to deploy ‘dry powder’ in push to double hash rate

  • Not a tech stock: Bitcoin is less correlated with the tech-heavy QQQ by comparison, even inversely correlated during the first half of the week.
  • Voyager repayments: Voyager has less than $350,000 in crypto, according to Arkham, down from half a billion when its debtor repayment plan was approved in May (Celsius is still working through its own).
  • Uncle Sam: The US government is sitting on more crypto than ever, with $13.6 billion (mostly bitcoin), up from $9.4 billion one month ago.

On the ground

Loading Tweet..
Happy Blast day
Loading Tweet..
The revolution will be [debated furiously on Snapshot]
Loading Tweet..
Build blockchains like aircraft carriers

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research Report Templates (6).png

Research

In recent months, a number of highly accretive developments were implemented across the protocol to improve fee capture, expand product functionality, and ultimately drive value accrual to the RUNE token, with more upgrades on the immediate horizon. These developments include hiking the minimum swap fee parameter to increase revenue, adding a Burn System Income Lever to reduce the RUNE supply, the addition of COSM-WASM smart contracting and IBC to enable an application layer, new chain integrations, and more.

article-image

Former IRS agent and Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan will remain imprisoned in Nigeria’s Kuje prison

article-image

When Permissionless III wraps on Friday, there will be 26 days left until the 2024 presidential election

article-image

Plus, an update from the ground in Salt Lake City at Permissionless III

article-image

The US regulator accused the crypto market-making firm of acting as an unregistered dealer

article-image

Customers can pay merchants in USDC or USDP on Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon, while US-based merchants are paid in dollars