Total supply of stablecoins dropped sharply for first time ever in Q2

cointelegraph.com:

The total supply of stablecoins saw its sharpest drop in history during Q2 2022, with stablecoin redemptions spiking as a result of “short-term liquidity and concerns about insolvency that were not present during the panic of 2020," according to data analytics firm Coinmetrics.

CoinMetrics head of research and development Lucas Nuzzi highlighted the data via Twitter on June 16, with a graph showing the total supply of stablecoins since January 2020.

The list included DAI, UDST, OMNI and TRON, SAI, USDK, PAX. While Circle’s USDC and Binance’s BUSD were compiled in a separate graph. Terra’s original variant of UST was not included in the graph.

22Q2 is the first time in the history of stablecoins where Total Supply decreased. Even if we exclude UST, over 10B has been redeemed *directly from the treasuries* of major issuersSome @coinmetrics data pic.twitter.com/AcCKx4Qp4z

Nuzzi noted that Tether saw the most redemptions of all centralized stablecoin issuers, with 7 billion of the total USDT supply wiped off the board in April and May, and is likely to have been caused by actions of a few, rather than any significant market-wide movements.

“The sharpness of that decrease suggests that a single entity, or small cohort, was behind it,” he said.

The implosion of the Terra eco-system including its native LUNA token and UST stablecoin in May coincided with Tether’s USDT de-pegging from the U.S. dollar by around 5%. As a result, around 7 billion USDT was redeemed as big players looked to exit the market and avoid any further potential carnage.

Another project to take a big hit was MakerDAO’s DAI, which saw 40% of its supply retired as a result of the “largest liquidation event of its history.”

USDC and BUSD were also included in a