Tether (USDT) Loses 1:1 to US Dollar Amid Heightened Sell Pressure in Curve’s 3pool

cryptonews.com:

Tether (USDT), the USD-pegged stablecoin issued by web3/fin tech company Tether, fell slightly below its 1:1 peg against the US dollar on Thursday on decentralized exchange (DEX) Curve Finance, pushing the DEX’s main stablecoin liquidity pool (Curve 3pool) into imbalance.

USDT fell as low as 0.998 versus its competitor USD-pegged stablecoin USDC and against Maker protocol’s algorithmic stablecoin DAI on Thursday.

It was last trading around $0.9992 on the DEX against both.

The drop in USDT’s value versus the peers that it shares the stablecoin pool with has pushed USDT’s weighting in the pool to as high as 59% (over $135 million), versus 21% for USDC (just under $50 million) and 20% for DAI (just under $46 million).

That reflects the liquidity pool being forced to absorb the heightened sell pressure of USDT versus its 3pool peers.  

As per CoinGecko, USDT last traded around $0.999 on major exchanges, having experienced 24-hour trading volumes of over $20 billion.

USDT remains by far the largest existing US dollar-pegged stablecoin, with a market cap of around $83.8 billion.

USDC and DAI’s market caps, meanwhile, are $26.06 billion and $4.47 billion respectively.

The reason for the heightened sell pressure in the USDT market on Thursday remain unclear.

However, despite USDT being the biggest stablecoin by market cap, which suggests it is the most trusted, USDT’s issuer Tether faces regular criticism over an alleged lack of transparency regarding the reserves that back its stablecoin.

That being said, Tether has been making efforts in recent years to address concerns about its balance sheet, and the value of its reserves is published daily on its website.

As of the 3rd of August 2023, Tether claims to have total assets of $87.2