Terra-fying war rages as USD Coin [USDC] and Binance USD [BUSD] battle it out

Can you hear the guns being loaded? That’s the sound of battle intensifying as there are only three stablecoins holding their places among the top ten cryptos by market cap. These were Tether [USDT], USD Coin [USDC], and Binance USD [BUSD].

It might look like USDC is the clear winner when compared to BUSD, but Binance’s stablecoin is a heavyweight player as well. Furthermore, the metrics offered some fascinating insights into how these two stablecoins are performing.

Vitals looking stable?

You’d think it would go without saying, but circumstances have changed, so at press time, rest assured that USDC and BUSD were both still pegged to the dollar.

However, note that the market caps for both stablecoins have been falling and this was still in motion at press time. The data showed that while BUSD’s market cap began falling from around late February 2022, USDC’s market cap began falling sometime around early March this year.

That being said, USDC’s market cap was above 48.3 billion at press time, while BUSD was starting to rise above 17.1 billion at press time.

Source: Santiment

Next up, it’s important to compare USDC and BUSD exchange supply to understand what investors are trying to do presently. This yielded some fascinating results, as we can see that while USDC and BUSD supply on exchanges has been falling since around early 2022, there was more BUSD left on exchanges in spite of USDC’s higher market cap. This shows that stablecoin buyers have a much stronger preference for USDC.

Source: Santiment

However, are investors actually making use of the stablecoins they have? Comparing the velocity of USDC and BUSD, we can see that both assets saw a sharp drop in inactivity.

This can be traced back to the recent Bitcoin and Ether crash, as bulls step back to assess the damage before buying new alts. However, it’s significant to note that at press time, the difference in velocity between USDC and BUSD was not too far off, with USDC only seeing 2-3 more daily address changes on average than BUSD.

Source: Santiment

Terra-fying developments

Once a rising star among alts and stablecoins, investors are now wary as TerraUSD [UST] fell out of the top ten cryptos by market cap list. At press time, the former stablecoin had lost 33.07% of its value in a day and was trading at $0.6122. It was the eleventh biggest crypto by market cap.