Crypto liquidity starts recovery as stablecoin market cap stops falling

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The stablecoin market cap, which faced downward pressure after May’s multi-billion dollar collapse of TerraUST (UST-USD), has stopped falling on a monthly basis for the first time since April in a sign that crypto liquidity could be starting a path to recovery.

The stablecoin market cap, now standing at roughly $153B, is still down 20% from its peak “but this may be a sign that the extreme institutional deleveraging appears to have paused for now,” Morgan Stanley analyst Sheena Shah wrote in a recent note to clients.

Nevertheless, there seems to be little demand to borrow to finance crypto bets as central banks across the globe continue tightening monetary policy and thus tightening financial conditions.

“There doesn’t seem to be huge demand to re-leverage in the crypto world at this moment,” Shah said, adding that decentralized finance platform lending is still off 70% in 2022. “It will be hard for this crypto cycle to bottom without fiat leverage growing or crypto leverage growing.”

Shah noted that Tether (USDT-USD), the world’s largest stablecoin by market cap, has seen redemptions halt and its market issuance rose in the past week, climbing $1.7B in 10 days. By contrast, USD Coin (USDC-USD), the second largest stablecoin, has seen its market cap slide $2.6B since the beginning of July.

“The fall in USDC market cap started ahead of the regulatory change and looks similar to the decline seen earlier in the year between March and May,” Shah noted.

Overall, the combined market cap monthly growth rate of the two stablecoins (or digital tokens pegged to the value of a more “stable” asset) is slightly above zero for the first time since April, showing a light at the end of the tunnel in crypto liquidity.

Looking at the cryptoverse, bitcoin (BTC-USD) fell 1.4% to $21.16K in Monday early morning trading, and ethereum (ETH-USD) dipped 4% to $1.55K.

Last week, (August 19) bitcoin gives up August gains as risk-off sentiment takes hold.

This news is republished from another source. You can check the original article here.

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