TrueUSD Stablecoin Loses US Dollar Peg

The stablecoin TrueUSD (TUSD) depegged from the US dollar after holders sold hundreds of millions worth of TUSD to buy Tether (USDT), Cointelegraph reported. TUSD tumbled to $0.984 at 23:15 on January 15. At the time of writing, TUSD is trading for $0.9875, per CoinGecko data.

Most holders cashed out on Binance. According to Cointelegraph data, TUSD worth almost $340 million was sold on Binance in the last 24 hours. In comparison, traders bought TUSD worth just $297 million.

Challenges in real-time attestation

TUSD is touted as the first digital asset with live on-chain attestations by independent third-party institutions, as per CoinGecko. Last week, leading media reported that the stablecoin was having difficulties posting attestations of its reserves in real time, which indicates it could have been insufficiently collateralized.

Users can’t withdraw TUSD from Poloniex

According to X user Rho Rider, there are issues with potential TUSD arbitrage trading. The stablecoin had been trading at $0.92 for weeks on Poloniex, almost 8% down from its peg. Rho concluded that arbitrage trade was impossible because users couldn’t deposit or withdraw TUSD on Poloniex.

At the time of writing, users still can’t withdraw TUSD from this exchange. Crypto X users speculate that the substantial selling might be because TUSD was not listed as one of the assets on Manta, a Binance launch pool.

A rough year for Justin Sun

TUSD is linked to Justin Sun of Tron, who has been having a rough year by all accounts. After his digital asset platform HTX was hacked in late November 2023, users withdrew $258 million.

Stablecoins are struggling too

In July 2023, Bankless Times reported that the stablecoin market cap had dropped down to its levels in August 2021, citing a report by CCData, a cryptocurrency analytics platform.

According to the report, dated July 20, the stablecoin market cap was just $127 billion. It is currently $134 billion according to Coinmarketcap.