TUSD Loses $1 Peg Amid Binance's FDUSD Focus: Analyst

The trueUSD (TUSD) stablecoin remains off its intended $1 peg as the Asia business day continues, and is currently trading at $0.988, CoinDesk Indices data shows.

Data from crypto exchange Binance shows that in the last 24 hours, there have been over $444 million in TUSD sell orders versus $301 million in buy orders, resulting in a flow deficit of $142 million.

"TUSD is related to Justin Sun, and its market cap is constantly shrinking," Bradley Park, an analyst at CryptoQuant told CoinDesk in a Telegram interview. "It is likely due to the potential impact of the HTX and Poloniex hacks."

Park also pointed to Binance killing fees on First Digital's FDUSD trading pairs with ether (ETH), BNB Chain's BNB, dogecoin (DOGE) and Solana's SOL as another reason for the decline with the exchange not including TUSD as an option for staking new tokens on its Launchpad.

The spike in FDUSD volume, coinciding with TUSD's de-pegging, suggests a transfer to FDUSD for participating in the FDUSD launch pool and joining the Binance Manta launchpad, Park explained. The launchpad is a popular service that rewards new tokens to investors that lock up specific assets, such as FDUSD or BNB, for a period of time.

"We believe that TUSD holders sold as the Launchpad pool did not open, causing the de-pegging," he continued.

There have also been continued concerns over TUSD's attestations. However, a spokesperson for Techteryx, the firm behind TUSD, told CoinDesk that "attestations continue in the ordinary course of business and any suggestion to the contrary is false."

The spokesperson also said that Justin Sun is not a shareholder of Techteryx.

"Recent community mining activities in relation to Binance Launchpool have been noted, leading to short term arbitrage opportunities which is part of the normal market dynamics and liquidity adjustment," they continued.