Stablecoin supply contracts and tweets with perspective

Plus Odds & Ends and Thoughts & Prognostications

May 20

Hype: Excited to announce Dose of DeFi: Brooklyn, a happy hour mingle in between NFT.NYC and ETH NYC on June 23. More details soon.

Chart of the week: Stablecoins on the move

The stablecoin market cap shrank dramatically in May, led of course, by the implosion of UST. There were knock-down effects on nearly every other stablecoin with the biggest Tether depeg since March 2020.

The chart above, from Coin Metrics Surveying stablecoins in the wake of the LUNA/UST collapse, shows outflows for the three major stablecoins from smart contracts. Presumably, users are withdrawing stablecoins and then redeeming for cash or worries over the solvency of whatever yield the stablecoins are farming. There’s also been a rush to USDC, away from Tether because “the switching cost to USDC is basically 0, for now.” Lots more to unfold for the stablecoin landscape, especially as rising interest rates enhance their profitability.

Tweet of the week: Respect from a rival

Joseph Delong* @josephdelong

Things I like about Uniswap that I didn’t appreciate in 2021 - Design discipline If you look at v2 you’d see a highly integrated design. You cannot find a misplaced byte or opcode. The mechanism for fee accumulation is legendary

Former Sushiswap CTO Joseph Delong had a reflective tweet thread on Uniswap, which showered praise on his former rival. A refreshing perspective in the recent toxic fog of Crytpo Twitter.

Odds and Ends

Odd Lots: the manager that warned of Terra’s collapse Link
Coinbase app now offers DeFi, web3 access point Link
Biden admin. proposes CEXs segregate customer funds Link
Bancor v3 launches Link
Maker founder and Balancer/Rai builder Nikolai is back on Twitter Link

Thoughts and Prognostications

High-level thoughts on stETH/ETH exchange rate dynamics [Hasu]
Decentralized Society: Finding Web3's Soul [Glen Weyl, Puja Ohlhaver, Vitalik]
DeFi's Original Sin [0xHamz]
What happened to DeFi? [Getty Hill/GFX Labs]
What to watch for in Tether’s upcoming attestation report [JP Koning/Coindesk]
What kind of financial asset is Bitcoin? [Noah Smith/Noahopinion]

That’s it! Feedback appreciated. Just hit reply. Written in Brooklyn in peak spring.

Dose of DeFi is written by Chris Powers, with help from Denis Suslov and Financial Content Lab. Caney Fork, which owns Dose of DeFi, is a contributor to DXdao* and benefits financially from it and its products’ success. All content is for informational purposes and is not intended as investment advice.

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