Traders turn to USDT as BUSD dominates heavily imbalanced Curve liquidity pool

Curve pool’s Binance USD (BUSD) V2 pool is heavily imbalanced, with crypto traders showing preferences for Tether’s USDT.

The BUSD V2 dashboard shows that the embattled stablecoin accounted for roughly 81% of the pool’s $12.85 million reserve, while USDT made up 4%. The other stablecoins in the pool — USD Coin (USDC) and DAI — make up the balance.

Crypto analytical tool Chaineye said BUSD’s dominance surged from 68.3% to 79.1% on Feb. 13 following the regulatory action against the stablecoin issuer Paxos. A research analyst at 21 Shares, Tom Wan, added that BUSD liquidity decreased by $3 million.

Meanwhile, a look at 3Pool’s dashboard — the largest liquidity pool on Curve — shows that crypto investors favor USDT over other stablecoin options. According to the dashboard, USDT accounted for 21.47% of the reserve, USDC accounted for 38.39%, and DAI made up 40.12% as of press time.

Some analysts have expressed concerns that the recent regulatory action might affect USDC’s issuer Circle. However, Matrixport head of research Markus Thielen told CryptoSlate he does not think the regulators are targeting stablecoins directly.

Curve’s trading volume spikes

Meanwhile, Curve’s trading volume spiked by 900% to over $1 billion amid the growing stablecoin war, according to DeFillama data.

This is one of the protocol’s highest trading volumes — behind what it recorded during the height of the FTX’s implosion in Nov. 2022.

Curv Finance has also entered the stablecoin scene with its overcollateralized crvUSD dollar-pegged digital asset. The DeFi protocol released the whitepaper for the asset last year, and the community is anticipating its issuance.

Curve’s CRV token grew by roughly 14% in the last 24 hours to as high as $1.09 before retracing to its current levels of $1.07 as of press time, according to CryptoSlate data.