In response to the extraordinary depegging event of the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin caused by the collapse of its counterparty Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), crypto whales have reported severe losses and appear to have embarked on a series of capital flights to protect assets. Du Jun, the co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Global, posted:
The same day, blockchain personality and Tron founder Justin Sun reportedly withdrew 82 million USDC from the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, Aave v2, over a series of transactions and swapped from Dai (DAI). At the time of publication, 82 million USDC is worth $75.26 million.
Speaking of DAI, Maker Dao, the stablecoin's issuer, filed an emergency protocol on Mar. 11 that, among many items, called for restrictions on minting DAI using USDC in an effort to prevent panic selling. Maker DAO is one of the largest holders of the stablecoin with over 3.1 billion USDC ($2.85 billion) in reserves collateralizing DAI, which also depegged as a result. Subsequently, crypto projects incorporating DAI in its tokenomics, too, suffered losses due to a chain-reaction.
Curve Finance, a popular DeFi protocol for trading stablecoins, reported a historic all-time high daily trading volume of $5.67 billion due to the events. In context, the protocol only has a total value locked of $3.77 billion. A few other platforms simply could not handle the sheer volume of trade requests relating to USDC. In one incident, a user received just 0.05 USDT after paying over 2.08 million USDC in a swap that resulted in permanent loss. In an update, KyberSwap, the decentralized exchange responsible for facilitating the swap, said it was "assisting with funds recover," and is in touch with the user regarding the
Read more on cointelegraph.com