Crypto shaken as SVB exposure depegs $37 billion stablecoin

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

The fallout from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank reached further into crypto, unhinging a key cog in the market that’s meant to be among the safest digital assets in the space. The second-largest stablecoin fell from its intended $1 peg, trading as low as 81.5 cents as investors reacted to the exposure of issuer Circle Internet Financial Ltd. to the collapsed bank. USD Coin, or USDC, is an asset-backed stablecoin and a widely used plank of crypto markets. The token is intended to hold a constant $1 value, fully backed by reserves of cash and short-dated Treasuries. But late Friday, Circle disclosed that $3.3 billion of its roughly $40 billion stockpile of reserves is held with Silicon Valley Bank, which has just become one of the largest US bank failures in recent history. Regulators seized the bank on Friday and investors are awaiting more clarity on the return of deposits. In that vacuum, USDC fell below $1, and was trading at about 91 cents as of 8:45 a.m. in New York. Smaller stablecoins like DAI, which is sometimes viewed as a proxy for USDC, and Pax Dollar also fell from their pegs. DAI is the fourth-largest stablecoin by circulation and one of the most widely used tokens in decentralized finance.

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“DAI is not a safe haven in this regard because a lot of it is collateralized by USDC directly,” Michael Egorov, founder of decentralized exchange Curve Finance, said in an email. USDC had a