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Stablecoin depeg case files

The price fell. The question is what holders got back.

Eleven documented depegs between 2018 and 2026, filtered by what actually broke. Every file records the failure mechanism, the fall, and the recovery outcome as three separate facts, and stays readable without JavaScript.

11 case files shown

Confidence

USDT · Tether

A discount opened on doubts about banking and reserves

What broke: No redemption failure was established at the time. Concern about Tether's banking arrangements and the accuracy of its reserve claims drove concentrated selling on several venues.

The fall: USDT traded at a visible discount to one dollar across multiple venues before recovering.

Holder outcome: The peg was restored. Three years later the CFTC ordered a $41 million penalty, finding that from at least June 2016 to February 2019 the tokens had not been fully backed by fiat in Tether's accounts at all times.

CFTC order, October 2021
Collateral

DAI · Maker

Liquidation auctions cleared at effectively zero bids

What broke: ETH fell roughly 50 per cent in a day while the network was congested. Collateral auctions had too few bidders, so vaults were liquidated for near-zero DAI and the protocol was left several million DAI short.

The fall: DAI subsequently traded above one dollar for an extended period as borrowers competed to acquire it, an upward peg failure.

Holder outcome: The protocol was recapitalised by auctioning newly minted MKR. DAI holders were not impaired; vault owners liquidated at zero bids were not made whole.

Read the case analysis
Algorithmic

UST · Terraform Labs

The stabilising mechanism accelerated the collapse

What broke: UST held its peg by interchangeability with LUNA rather than by any reserve. Once confidence broke, minting LUNA to defend the peg diluted the asset supporting it.

The fall: UST and LUNA fell close to zero within days, wiping out tens of billions of dollars in market value.

Holder outcome: No par redemption existed and none was performed. A jury found Terraform Labs and Do Kwon liable for fraud in April 2024, followed by more than $4.5 billion in judgments and settlements.

SEC: $4.5 billion following fraud verdict
Supervisory

BUSD · Paxos

Issuance stopped while redemption was preserved

What broke: Nothing in the reserve. New York's Department of Financial Services ordered Paxos to cease minting Paxos-issued BUSD over unresolved issues in its oversight of the Binance relationship.

The fall: The token remained close to par; the visible change was a shrinking supply rather than a discount.

Holder outcome: DFS stated it was monitoring Paxos to verify orderly redemption, and placed no restriction on existing BUSD trading in New York by licensed entities. Redemption was performed.

NYDFS notice on Paxos-issued BUSD
Reserve custody

USDC · Circle

Part of the reserve was trapped at a bank that failed

What broke: $3.3 billion of USDC reserves remained at Silicon Valley Bank when regulators closed it, about 8 per cent of the reserve; roughly $32.4 billion of the backing sat in short-dated Treasury bills.

The fall: USDC traded below a dollar over a weekend during which redemption rails were closed for reasons unrelated to solvency.

Holder outcome: After US authorities confirmed depositors would be made whole, Circle said the $3.3 billion would be fully available. By 15 March it had cleared substantially all of the minting and redemption backlog, redeeming $3.8 billion and minting $0.8 billion since that Monday.

Circle: reserve risk removed, de-peg closes
Confidence

FDUSD · First Digital

An insolvency allegation moved the price, not the reserve

What broke: A prominent industry figure publicly claimed the issuer was effectively insolvent and unable to meet redemptions. The issuer rejected the claim and said FDUSD remained fully backed; the underlying dispute concerned a different token.

The fall: FDUSD fell to roughly $0.87 within hours.

Holder outcome: Redemptions continued to be processed through the episode, with tens of millions of dollars honoured in the days that followed, and the peg was restored.

Read the case analysis
Counterparty

xUSD · Stream Finance

A yield-bearing token lost the manager holding its assets

What broke: Stream Finance suspended deposits and withdrawals after disclosing that an external fund manager had lost approximately $93 million of platform assets. The return depended on discretionary off-chain management holders could not observe.

The fall: xUSD fell roughly 77 per cent toward $0.26, with around $160 million of deposits frozen.

Holder outcome: No par redemption path existed. Outside counsel was retained to investigate, and researchers traced roughly $285 million of interconnected exposure across lending markets that had accepted such tokens as collateral. Unresolved at the review date.

Read the case analysis
Counterparty

deUSD · Elixir

Contagion from one counterparty ended in an orderly exit

What broke: About 65 per cent of deUSD collateral, roughly $68 million, had been placed with Stream Finance. When Stream halted, the backing became a claim on a suspended counterparty.

The fall: deUSD lost its peg as the impairment became clear.

Holder outcome: Elixir wound the token down and redeemed holders one-for-one in USDC, disabling mint and redeem infrastructure, snapshotting remaining direct holders and opening a claim process. A large majority had already been redeemed when the wind-down was announced.

Reported wind-down and redemption terms
Mint authority

USR · Resolv

Unbacked supply diluted a collateral pool that stayed intact

What broke: An attacker reached Resolv infrastructure through a compromised contractor credential, escalating to signing authority, and minted roughly 80 million unbacked USR in two transactions from 02:21 UTC, extracting about $25 million as ETH.

The fall: USR fell below $0.80 within minutes and continued toward $0.20, even though the collateral pool was never touched.

Holder outcome: Contracts with pause functions were paused by 05:16 UTC, approximately 46 million of the 80 million illegitimate USR were burned or blacklisted, and pre-hack USR holders were compensated one-for-one, with most redemptions already processed at the time of the post-mortem.

Resolv post-mortem, 4 April 2026
Mint authority

USDR and EURR · StablR

A one-of-three signing threshold defeated a MiCA licence

What broke: An attacker obtained one key of a wallet configuration requiring only one of three signatures, added themselves as administrator, removed the legitimate signers and minted approximately $13.5 million of unbacked tokens, withdrawing around $2.8 million.

The fall: EURR fell toward $0.55 while USDR stayed close to par, showing that two tokens from one issuer do not move together.

Holder outcome: The issuer froze operations, asked exchanges to suspend trading, notified the Maltese regulator and confirmed that circulating volumes were temporarily not backed one-for-one as MiCA requires. Unresolved at the review date.

Reported freeze and unbacked mint
Oracle

BLC · Balance

A false price fed straight into the liquidation engine

What broke: An attacker pushed an abnormal bitcoin price through the protocol's median oracle and used it to liquidate collateral vaults that were not undercollateralised at true prices. Public incident reports noted no deviation check, minimum floor or liquidation delay.

The fall: BLC fell from its intended dollar value to fractions of a cent.

Holder outcome: With no external redemption path, nothing existed to arbitrage the price back. This case file omits a drained-value estimate because no supporting source is linked here.

Read the case analysis