In the Shadow of Bank Runs: Lessons from the Silicon Valley Bank Failure and Its Impact on Stablecoins
Federal Reserve FEDS Note, December 2025. Allium is the onchain data source.
Stablecoins are crypto-assets designed to maintain a stable value against a reference asset, typically the U.S. Dollar. The peg to the dollar is supported by the assets that back the stablecoin. Stablecoins perform dollar-like functions in decentralized finance ("DeFi") and represent a run-able liability for their issuers. As with money market funds and bank deposits, stablecoins are susceptible to crises of confidence, contagion, and self-reinforcing runs.
In this note we utilize a granular dataset to document the market stress experienced by USDC, the second largest stablecoin by market cap, during the Silicon Valley Bank ("SVB") crisis of March 2023. SVB was a traditional bank that failed due to inadequate risk management practices.1 The bank experienced a rapid run of deposits and was taken into receivership by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ("FDIC").
Shortly after, Circle, the issuer of USDC, publicly announced that it was unable to access a portion of its dollar reserves held as (uninsured) deposits at SVB. This announcement precipitated a surge in redemption requests by holders of USDC, causing the stablecoin to lose its peg against the dollar on secondary markets when Circle shut down primary market operations over the weekend.
State of Stablecoins and Payments: September 2026
Most Robinhood Chain stock trading is outside NYSE hours
A year ago the Super Bowl favorite was priced at 2%
Solana runs 47% of onchain RWA trades
A live market prices Unitree at 4.2x its IPO
Prediction markets moved before currencies in three elections
Circle's revenue tracks USDC supply, and supply is falling
Stablecoins add $170B of genuinely new Treasury demand
Stablecoins are 0.31% of cross-border payments
Polymarket and Kalshi now predict future GPU rental prices
Onchain: The New Alternative Alpha
A live market priced CXMT's 472% IPO pop before Shanghai opened
Gain exposure to Anthropic and OpenAI before the IPO
Binance outflows shifted to self-custody into the MiCA deadline
The most expensive long onchain is a crowded bet on SK Hynix
Nvidia holds 74% of the odds on a $600B lead
State of Onchain Finance Q2 2026
Prediction markets price the Fed almost exactly like Wall Street
Three onchain venues priced SpaceX within 19% of its open
.webp)
Polymarket's World Cup markets have taken $98M
ZEC fell 64%, and the selling started before the bug was found
Tokenized US funds hold $14.2B onchain
Tokenized equities reached $3.3B onchain
Non-crypto perps were 28% of Hyperliquid open interest in May
Ondo is the only large RWA issuer with a public token
USDH: What Coinbase Actually Bought
Onchain perps carry real price signal while US equities are dark
Hyperliquid runs about 70% of onchain perp volume
Five years of BENJI, the first US-registered fund onchain
1% of wallets generate 65% of prediction market volume
Stellar settles at the scale of a regional payment network
Tokenized Equities: Market Adoption and Trading Dynamics
Stablecoins: The emergence of a new payment rail
Onchain Execution: How Institutions Are Trading in DeFi Markets
Stablecoin Payments: The Truth Behind the Numbers
Cross-Chain Arbitrage: The Next Frontier of MEV in Decentralized Finance
The State of Crypto: The Future of Money Is Here
Stablecoins: Five killer tests to gauge their potential
Onchain Trading Data Gaps: Risks for Crypto Market Oversight
On-Chain Analysis of Smart Contract Dependency Risks on Ethereum
Bybit Hack: How the Lazarus Group Exploited DeFi Protocols to Launder $400M
Game Theoretic Liquidity Provisioning in Concentrated Liquidity Market Makers
Algorithmic Techniques for Utility Improvement Across the Blockchain Stack
Finance is moving onchain. Allium is the system of record it runs on.
