Ethena’s synthetic-dollar stablecoin USDe experienced one of its largest monthly contractions to date, while fiat-backed stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, and PYUSD drew billions in inflows.
According to CoinGecko, USDe’s market capitalization fell from $9.3 billion on November 1 to $7.1 billion by November 30, representing roughly $2.2 billion in redemptions and a 24% decline in supply over the month.
Unlike traditional stablecoins, Ethena’s USDe maintains its dollar peg through crypto and futures trading strategies rather than holding actual dollars. As a result, outflows occur when users sell USDe on the open market, withdraw from liquidity pools, or unwind positions on decentralized applications (DApps).
At the time of writing, CoinGecko reports that the overall stablecoin market capitalization stands at $311 billion, with dollar-backed stablecoins dominating the sector at $303 billion.
USDe Outflows Follow October Depeg
USDe’s contraction in November comes weeks after the synthetic stablecoin experienced a depegging event on Binance, where its price briefly fell to $0.65.
Ethena founder Guy Young attributed the drop to a Binance-specific oracle issue, stressing that the incident did not affect USDe’s underlying collateral mechanism. He added that the token’s minting and redemption functions worked “perfectly” during the episode, with around 2 billion USDe redeemed across decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.
On October 9, USDe’s market capitalization stood at $14.8 billion, ranking it as the third-largest stablecoin at the time. Since then, it has lost over 53% of its market value. CoinGecko data currently shows USDe valued at $6.9 billion, placing it fourth in the stablecoin market cap rankings.
Fiat-Backed Stablecoins Gain $3.2 Billion in November
While USDe struggled, fiat-backed stablecoins posted steady gains. Tether’s USDT grew by $1.3 billion to $184.6 billion, and Circle’s USDC increased roughly $600 million to $76.5 billion.
PayPal USD (PYUSD) saw the strongest growth among major dollar-pegged stablecoins, jumping from $2.8 billion to $3.8 billion in November — a $1 billion inflow and 35% month-on-month growth. According to DeFiLlama, PYUSD has surged over 216% since September, when its market cap was $1.2 billion, representing a $2.6 billion increase in just three months.
Meanwhile, Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD, which surpassed a $1 billion market capitalization for the first time in November, continued its upward momentum throughout the month.
CoinGecko data shows RLUSD grew from a $960 million market cap on November 1 to $1.26 billion by November 30, an increase of $300 million.
