What is USDC?

USDC is a fully-reserved stablecoin cryptocurrency and Unlike other assets that fluctuate in price, is designed to maintain price equivalence to the U.S. dollar. USDC has a variety of uses in the crypto ecosystem but is commonly deployed in DeFi protocols and by traders. USD Coin is managed by a consortium called Centre, which was founded by Circle and includes members from the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and Bitcoin mining company Bitmain, an investor in Circle.

What is USDT?

USDT (Tether) is an asset-backed cryptocurrency stablecoin. It was launched by the company Tether Limited Inc. in 2014. 

USDT is pegged to real-world currencies on a 1-to-1 basis. Tether tokens are referred to as stablecoins because they offer price stability as they are pegged to a fiat currency.

Important Binance, Coinbase, USDC & USDT News During December 2022

December 9, 2022: Crypto Exchange Coinbase Asks Users to Switch USDT for USDC:

Coinbase is waiving the conversion fees for users who wish to switch to a "trusted stablecoin" in a new campaign that highlights the quality of reserves that back Circle-owned USD coin (USDC). "The events of the past few weeks have put some stablecoins to the test and we’ve seen a flight to safety," Coinbase said in blog post published Friday morning Asia time. "We believe that USD coin (USDC) is a trusted and reputable stablecoin." Coinbase said starting today it's waiving fees for global retail customers to convert tether (USDT) to USDC. Days after the FTX collapse, USDT was knocked off its peg and traded as low as 93 cents. The majority of trading pairs on exchanges have returned to $1, though CoinGecko data shows that USDT continues to trade at 99 cents on some pairs at Binance. (Source)

December 12, 2022: U.S. Justice Dept is split over charging Binance as crypto world falters:

Splits between U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors are delaying the conclusion of a long-running criminal investigation into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, four people familiar with the matter have told Reuters. The investigation began in 2018 and is focused on Binance's compliance with U.S. anti-money laundering laws and sanctions, these people said. Some of the at least half dozen federal prosecutors involved in the case believe the evidence already gathered justifies moving aggressively against the exchange and filing criminal charges against individual executives including founder Changpeng Zhao, said two of the sources. Others have argued taking time to review more evidence, the sources said. The inquiry involves prosecutors at three Justice Department offices: the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section, known as MLARS, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Washington in Seattle and the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team. Justice Department regulations say that money laundering charges against a financial institution must be approved by the MLARS chief. Leaders from the other two offices, along with higher-level DOJ officials, would likely also have to sign off on any action against Binance, three of the sources said. (Source)

December 13, 2022: Binance Temporarily Paused USDC Withdrawal

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, paused withdrawals of the stablecoin USDC on Tuesday while it carried out a “token swap.” USDC withdrawals were resumed about 8 hours after Binance first announced the pausing of withdrawals. The move came as investor concerns grow about Binance’s stability following the collapse of rival exchange FTX as well as a report of a potential criminal investigation from the U.S. government. Zhao said that any transfers into USDC from the stablecoin known as PAX, as well as Binance’s own token BUSD, require routing through a bank based in New York which is not yet open. The suggestion from Zhao is that users are looking to convert their PAX and BUSD into USDC in order to withdraw their funds from Binance. (Source)

December 13, 2022: Conversion of 3 billion Tether from the Tron network (TRC20) to Ethereum (ERC20) at the request of Binance:

Tether (USDT), the issuer of the stablecoin, has announced in a tweet that it will transfer 3 billion dollars of Tether from the TRON network (TRC20) to the Ethereum network (ERC20) at the request of Binance.

Binance exchange is currently facing a huge wave of withdrawals, so that USDC stablecoin withdrawals from this exchange have been temporarily suspended. This action seems to respond to the large volume of requests for capital withdrawal from the users of this exchange.

December 13, 2022: Justin Sun (Co-founder of Tron network) deposited 100M USD to to Binance amid FUD campaign

On Dec. 13, TRON founder Justin Sun tweeted that he had deposited $100 million to Binance. The accompanying transaction link confirmed 100 million USDC going to address 0xd189…eb48 at around 07:00 UTC. In response, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said the funds were related to a deal bringing BUSD to the TRON blockchain. But he is not sure of the precise nature of the deposit. (Source)

❌ In the past days and weeks, the Binance exchange has made many efforts to remove FUD from itself, the latest of which is the publication of the audit results of the famous Mazars company of its reserves. According to the proof of reserves of this exchange, Binance has assets of up to 56 billion dollars, which can make this exchange somewhat safe from these margins. CZ also published a tweet and called this exchange an attack by competitors and assured that Binance will continue to work with strength.

Dashboard Introduction & Methodology

On the occasion of several important news over Binance & USDT and USDC activity on this exchange and also due to the Coinbase advise to its users to exchange their USDT into USDC as a safer asset, In this dashboard, I am going to perform some analysis of USDC & USDT on Ethereum network during the past 2 week. For this analysis, I have seperated the time periods into 3 parts:

• Binance News: 12th & 13th December, the dates where there were several important news abount Binance and the suspension of USDC withdrawals and also changing USDT from TRC20 network to ERC20.

• Coinbase Advise To Switch USDT to USDC: only Highlighting December 9, for this time period but we can also analyze the days after this announcement.

• Other Days: All other days during the past 2 weeks except the days that are included among 2 above time periods.

In this dashboard, I am going to:

1- Analyze USDC & USDT flow within Ethereum blockchain.

2- USDC & USDT Inflow/Outflow from CEXs and especially Binance Exchange.

3- Top destinations of USDC & USDT transfers within past 2 weeks.

4- USDC & USDT swap activity within this time period.

5- USDC & USDT balance of Ethereum users and also centralized exchanges.

• USDC Contract Address: 0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48
• USDT Contract Address: 0xdac17f958d2ee523a2206206994597c13d831ec7

Based on these charts, The activity of USDC and USDT transactions during the day of the Coinbase advise (9th December) and also the day after this request (10th December), is more than other days (including the Binance News days). Moreover, we can see high spikes of USDT activity during this time period (in the normalized area charts) that shows the high USDT activity during this time span which can be mainly because users were trying to switch from USDT to USDC According to the Coinbase advise!

Moreover, we can also see some semi-high spikes during the Binance news days especially in terms of number of transactions.

But in terms of volume, we can see Dec. 9 & 10 & 11 are 3 days with the lowest USDC & USDT transactions volume which is kinda weird (despite those high number of transactions that we have seen in previous charts).

Also, we can see that during the Binance New days (especially 13th December) and also the days after that (especially 16th December), the highest volume of USDC & USDT transfers has acheived and also there is the highest spike of USDT transfer (on the left area chart) during the December 13. The same day that Binance decided to convert USDT tokens from TRC20 network to ERC20.

USDC & USDT Transactions Overall Stats

CEXs Outflow/Inflow

Based on the above charts, the "Binance News" timespan, are the days with the highest number of inflow and outflows of both USDC and USDT assets to/from centralized exchanges. these volatiles can be mainly because of the worrying news around Binance during this time period and seems users were transfering their USDC & USDT out of this exchange. in terms of volume, The highest spikes of both Inflows and Outflows to/from CEXs during the past 2 weeks achieved on 16th December (3 days after Binance hot news) and also during the main days of the Binance news (13th December). on these days, the average volume of transfers was also at its highest amount. Also, we can see the highest share of USDT transfers (especially outflow) during the Binance News day on 13th December. The reason behind this high activity of USDT can be because of withdrawal of users from Binance exchange due to the worrying news around this exchange. On the other hand, We can see lowest activity of both USDC & USDT inflows and outflows from/to CEXs during the Coinbase Advise day and 2 days after that.

On the above charts, I have specifically analyzed the USDC & USDT Inflow/Outflows on Binance Exchange during the past 2 week. As we see, activity of both USDC & USDT transfers (both inflows and outflows) during the "Binance News" time span is way more than all other days. As we see on the first area chart (outflow) the highest spike of USDT outflows from Binance has achieved on 13th December, the main day of hot news around Binance exchange. meaning that the majority of users were trying to remove their USDT (as one of the main stablecoins on Binance exchange) from this exchange because of the FUD.

On the other hand, we can also see a huge high spikes of Inflows to the Binance exchange on 13th December and based on the area chart, this activity is because of the both USDC & USDT inflows to this exchange !

Top Destinations of USDC & USDT Transfers

Based on the above charts, durign the past 2 weeks, the most popular destination of USDT transfers (in both terms of volume and number) was by far the Binance exchange and on the next ranks we have some other famous CEXs such as Coinbase, Kraken & Huobi.

But for USDC, we c an see the top destination in terms of number of transfers was the Uniswap (top decentralized exchange in Ethereum network) but in terms of volume of transfers, we can see Coinbase exchange is by far the most popular destination of USDC transfers.

On the above charts, You can see the top 5 destination of both USDC & USDT assets on each day in both terms of number and volume of transfers during the past 2 weeks. As we see, Binance is by far the most popular destination of USDT transfers in almost all days and on the other hand, Coinbase and Uniswap are the most popular USDC transfer destinations.

USDC & USDT Swaps Activity

On the above charts, we can see the swap activity of USDC & USDT during the past 2 weeks within the Ethereum decentralized exchanges. As we see, the highest swap activity of both of these assets (especially in terms of volume) have achieved during the main day of the Binance exchange news (December 13). Similar to the previous data, we can also see the lowest USDC & USDT swap activity during 9,10 & 11th December (the main day of Coinbase advise and 2 days after that). In almost all days during the past 2 weeks, we can see USDC Swaps has the highest share and swap activity of USDT is way less than USDC swaps during these days.

In above charts, I have calculated the buy volume (Swap to) and sell volume (Swap from) of USDC and USDT on each day over time and also calculated the net volume (buy - sell) of total swaps over time as well as the total cumulative volume.

As we see, USDC has by far better performance than USDT since in the most days especially recent 4-5 days, we can see the highest buy pressure of USDC and on the other hand, we can see highest negative net volume of USDT swap (sell pressure) during 13th December (the main day of Binance News) and the day when Just Sun has deposited 100M into the Binance exchange.

Totally, we can see the USDC swaps have almost 2x more volume than USDT swaps in majority of days and this shows the higher popularity of USDC in decentralized exchanges (as well as so many other DeFi protocols).

On the above charts, I have analyzed the USDC <=> USDT swap activities during the past 14 days in Ethereum DEXs.

As mentioner earlier, we can see the highest volume and number of swaps in both paths during the main days of the Binance News (especially 13th December). this shows the Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) of traders on this day.

Also we can see the number of swaps from USDT to USDC is way more than USDC to USDT. meaning that majority of users are acting as Coinbase said ! they are selling their USDT and buying USDC tokens instead.

Moreover, we can see a high spike of swaps from USDT to USDC specifically in the day when Coinbase officialy advised users to switch their USDT into USDC (December 9).

Summary and Conclusion

According to the above analysis:

• Binance Hot News Days (especially 13th December) and also the days that Coinbase has advised users (December 9) to exchange their USDT into USDC asset, were the days with the highest USDC & USDT activity during the past 2 weeks on Ethereum network.
• The highest number of transactions via USDC & USDT assets has occured during 9th (coinbase advise day) and 10th December (day after). The second highest peak of USDC & USDT transactions acitivty was during the days of Binance hot news.
• On December 13, Centralized Exchanges have experienced the highest number and also volume of USDC & USDT transfers out and into them. On same dates, Binance exchange has also experienced unusual USDC & USDT inflows and outflows.
• USDT was more affected by the Binance hot news (since this asset is the most popular stablecoin in most centralized exchanges including Binance). The majority of Outflows from Binance exchange belong to the USDT asset.
• Binance was by far the most popular destination of USDT transfers in almost all days and on the other hand, Coinbase and Uniswap were the most popular USDC transfer destinations.
• The volume of USDC & USDT swaps have achieved its highest activity during the Binance hot news time span especially on December 13th.
• On the day that Coinbase has advised users that change their USDT into USDC, the most number and volume of swaps from USDT to USDC were done on DEXs.
• Totally, Number and volume of swaps from USDT to USDC was way more than swaps from USDC to USDT especially during Coinbase and Binance news timespans.
• During the past 2 weeks, the sell pressure of USDT was more than USDC to the extent that the net swap volume of USDT in most days was negative while USDC had positive net swap volume in most days.
• As like as so many other DeFi protocols, we have seen that USDC was more popular than USDT (in both terms of number and volume of swaps) during the past 2 weeks in DEXs.
• The lowest average USDT balance of wallets (and also CEXs) has occured on the day that Coinbase has advised users to switch their USDT to USDC! But on the other hand, there was almost a semi-high spike of average USDC balance of wallets during on this day.

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According to the above chart, the lowest average USDT balance of wallets (and also CEXs) has occured on the day that Coinbase has advised users to switch their USDT to USDC! But on the other hand, we can see almost a semi-high spike of average USDC balance of wallets during on this day !

USDC & USDT Balance of Ethereum Wallets (+ Centralized Exchanges)