FTX collapse followed by an uptick in stablecoin inflows and DEX activity

Investors piled into stablecoins following FTX’s collapse, and an uptick in DEX activity suggests a rising interest in self-custody options.

On-chain data from Glassnode show Bitcoin’s (BTC) movements hit a new record for the largest net decline in aggregate BTC balances on exchanges, reducing by 72,900 BTC in one week. 

A similar movement occurred in April 2020, November 2020 and June 2022, with the current outflow leaving around 2.25 million BTC on exchanges.

Exchange exodus for Ether, but not stablecoins

While Ether (ETH) did not see an all-time high outflow from exchanges, 1.1 million ETH was withdrawn from exchanges over the last week. According to Glassnode, this marks the largest 30-day exchange balance decline since September 2020 during the decentralized finance (DeFi) summer in the same year.

Related: Exchange outflows hit historic highs as Bitcoin investors self-custody

Contrary to Bitcoin’s and Ether’s declining balances on exchanges, stablecoin balances remain net positive on exchanges, meaning their balances are growing. Over $1.04 billion in Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD) and Dai (DAI) moved to exchanges on Nov. 10. This marks Nov. 10 as the seventh-largest stablecoin inflow to exchanges.

According to Glassnode, with the major influx of stablecoins to exchanges, the current $41.186 billion total is an all-time high.

Bitcoin miners continue to sell

Bitcoin miners continue to remain under extreme pressure, and data highlights that hash prices are at all-time lows. The record-low hash prices led to miners selling around 9.5% of their treasuries, around 7.76 million BTC. This sell-off marks the sharpest monthly decline for miner balances since September 2018.

Decentralized and centralized altcoin performance

Delphi Digital used asset baskets to analyze performance between decentralized exchange (DEX) and centralized exchange (CEX) tokens and found that when comparing the basket prices to BTC, the DEX basket gained 24% whereas the CEX basket is down 2%.

Generally, on-chain activity correlates to overall Bitcoin, Ether and altcoin market sentiment, with the current FTX chaos catalyzing historic exchange outflows and CEX tokens’ underperformance. A likely trend to emerge from the current chaos is a steady uptick in self-custodied cryptocurrencies and an increase in DEX use.

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