Ethenas synthetic USDe contracts sharply as dollar-backed stablecoins expand

Ethenas USDe shed 24% of its supply in November, losing market share as fiat-backed stablecoins including USDT, USDC, PYUSD and RLUSD added billions.

Ethenas synthetic-dollar stablecoin USDe saw one of its sharpest monthly contractions yet, while fiat-backed stablecoins including USDT, USDC and PYUSD attracted billions in inflows.

CoinGecko data showed that Ethenas USDe stablecoin fell from a market capitalization of $9.3 billion on Nov. 1 to $7.1 billion on Nov. 30. The token saw about $2.2 billion in redemptions, marking a 24% decline in supply in November.

Ethenas USDe is a synthetic stablecoin that maintains its dollar peg through trading strategies with crypto and futures contracts rather than holding actual dollars. USDe outflows mean that users are either selling USDe on the open market, withdrawing from pools or unwinding their positions on decentralized applications (DApps).

At the time of writing, CoinGecko data shows that the overall stablecoin market cap is at $311 billion. The market remains dominated by US dollar stablecoins, capturing $303 billion of the sectors total valuation.

Ethena USDe stablecoins 30-day market capitalization chart. Source: CoinGeckoUSDe outflows follow October depeg

USDes November contraction comes weeks after the synthetic stablecoin suffered a depegging event on the crypto exchange Binance. At the time, USDe briefly plunged to $0.65 on the exchange.

Ethena founder Guy Young said that the drop was caused by a Binance-specific oracle issue and not a problem with USDes underlying collateral mechanism that backs the asset.

Young said that the USDe tokens minting and redemption functions operated “perfectly” during the incident, with about 2 billion tokens redeemed across decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.

On Oct. 9, USDe market cap hovered at $14.8 billion, making it the third-largest stablecoin at the time. Since then, it has lost over 53% of its market capitalization.

At the time of writing, CoinGecko data shows that USDe has a total valuation of $6.9 billion, dropping it to the fourth spot in the stablecoin market cap rankings.

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Fiat-backed stablecoins increased by $3.2 billion in November

While the synthetic-dollar stablecoin struggled during the month, fiat-backed stablecoins recorded modest but steady gains over the same time period.

Tether‘s USDt (USDT) saw a $1.3 billion increase to $184.6 billion, while Circle’s USDC (USDC) climbed to $76.5 billion, adding roughly $600 million to its supply.

PayPal USD (PYUSD) posted the strongest growth among the major dollar-pegged stablecoins, jumping from $2.8 billion to $3.8 billion in November. This marks 1 billion inflow for the month, a 35% month-on-month growth.

DefiLlama data showed that the PayPal PYUSD stablecoin expanded by over 216% since September, when it had a market cap of $1.2 billion. This represents a $2.6 billion increase in just three months.

Source: DefiLlama

Ripples (RLUSD) stablecoin, which breached a market capitalization of $1 billion for the first time in November, continued its growth throughout the month.

According to CoinGecko, RLUSD went from a $960 million market cap on Nov. 1 to a market cap of $1.26 billion on Nov. 30, marking a $300 million increase.

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