You may have noticed that Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) lost its peg to the US dollar last week. This happened as a result of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which currently holds $3.3 billion in Circle capital. Du Junthe co-founder of Huobi Global, lost along with some others whales more than $1 billion from USDC decoupling.
Loss of billions for crypto whales
Du Jun tweets that he managed to avoid the situation regarding terra (LUNA), made no losses in the implosion of 3AC and that he was not affected by the fall of FTX. Where it did go wrong was at Silvergate Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and USDC.
“I asked a few other crypto veterans about their losses. Those added up to more than $1 billion in stocks and assets. I am part of that myself.”
#PeckShieldAlert Justin Sun-labeled address has swapped 4M $USDC for ~4M $DAIhttps://t.co/Bmq1TR8PpC
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) March 11, 2023
Du Jun also indicates that he is sad and that it is time for him to save again. On the same day, Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, was reported to have withdrawn USD 82 million from the DeFi protocol Aave v2. Sun then exchanged his USDC for the DAI stablecoin.
USDC panic was high
The panic surrounding the USDC stablecoin was high over the weekend. This eventually resulted in some decentralized platforms being temporarily lost. How about the unfortunate user on KyberSwap, for example, who exchanged over 2 million USDC for 0.05 Tether (USDT). At that time there was some uncertainty surrounding USDC, but to then exchange two million USDC for $0.05 worth of Tether is of course not attractive either.
Today, I finally understand the anger that led to the creation of Bitcoin.
Who do you trust with your livelihood?
A “gov insured” bank that’s not actually insured?
An exchange that goes bust?
A stablecoin that depegs?
Or a currency that makes you 8% poorer every year?
— Nuseir Yassin (@nasdaily) March 11, 2023
For many people, these events are a true one eye opener for the power of Bitcoin (BTC). Ultimately, these are the reasons why Bitcoin was once built by Satoshi Nakamoto. It is an independent form of money that, provided you keep your bitcoin in its own wallet, is immune to the nonsense we now have to witness in the traditional financial world.
