Piling Up of Stablecoins Prompts for Abrupt Powerful Exodus into Bitcoin and Ether

A recent report published by the Wall Street Journal unveiled that between February 20 and 28, Bitcoin volume jumped by 243% from 522 bitcoin (BTC) to roughly 1,792 BTC traded based on trading of Binance’s BTC/RUB pair. Earlier, a Russian government study estimated the citizens of that country were in possession of 2 trillion rubles (roughly $20 billion) worth of crypto assets.

On March 1, 2022, data from the analytics provider Coin Dance showed weekly Localbitcoins.com trade volume has increased since the week prior. Metrics from Coingecko.com showed theb main reason was Binance which posted a sharp increase in volume in terms of RUB-denominated crypto trading pairs. USDT/RUB, BTC/RUB. In addition, ETH/RUB trade volume on Binance also popped up vs. other trading pairs on the exchange. But an even more breathtaking story has been developing around some stablecoins such as Tether.

Back then in just 24 hours one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, Binance, recorded $16,871,804 in USDT/RUB trade volume, $5,740,109 in BTC/RUB trades, and $3,429,714 in ether swaps with the ruble. On Tuesday, cryptocompare.com trading pair analytics showed the Russian ruble was Tether’s (USDT) sixth most traded pair. USDT/RUB trades represented 2.05% of all the Tether trades worldwide back then.

True, the USDT stacking phenomenon ist’n quite new. This story has been happening since October last year. Tether (USDT), supposedly backed 1:1 by the US dollar, was launched in 2014 to a relatively subdued market response. Interest started to accelerate in 2017 when Bitcoin (BTC) hit new highs around $20 000 and investors looked for a place to park their profits. Tether offered a cost-effective way to shift profits into a stable asset backed by the greenback, and that pushed the Tether supply from $1 million in January 2016 to $1.4 billion by 2020 and $78 billion as of February 2022.

Where are we moving now in terms of the stablecoins’ dominance and piling up tendency? It’s unlikely that this story will keep evolving for a continuous period of time. If history is of any indication, every such episode in the past happened to self-resolve into sudden rallies of BTC and other major coins such as Ethereum (ETH). It happens again and again because most crypto traders and investors by virtue of the cryptocurrency market and their apparent goals, have been pursuing enhanced investment yields – something which is impossible to reach by staying in all sorts of stablecoins and fixed-asset-linked coins.