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Journal article · 2022

The instability of stablecoins

Kun Duan, Andrew Urquhart · Finance research letters · Elsevier BV

This paper examines the stability of the five largest stablecoins by market capitalization using fractional time series analysis. It finds strong evidence of instability among these stablecoins, with varying correction speeds.

Read the source doi:10.1016/j.frl.2022.103573

Relevance to stablecoin measurement

peg stability

Key findings

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Method and limits

Research question What is the stability of the five largest stablecoins in terms of market capitalization?
Methodology Fractional time series analysis using hourly data.
Data and sample Hourly data of Tether, USDC, Binance USD, DAI, and PAX Dollar.

Abstract

This paper examines the stability of the five largest stablecoins in terms of market capitalization through a fractional time series analysis. By using hourly data of Tether, USDC, Binance USD, DAI and PAX Dollar, we find strong evidence of instability of stablecoins, although these deviations from the $1 mark are gradually corrected at different speeds for all stablecoins except for DAI. For the latter, the deviations do not converge even in the long-run due to non-stationarity of the differentiated series between its price and the $1 mark. BUSD is found as the most stable stablecoin with the fastest correction speed. Further rolling-window analysis shows that stability of different stablecoins exhibits strong co-movement and time-variation.

Indexed under

Market Structure & AdoptionEconomicsEconometricsInstabilityUs dollarMonetary economics

Cite this

Kun Duan, Andrew Urquhart (2022). The instability of stablecoins Finance research letters.

BibTeX
@article{duan2022instabilitystablecoins,
  title = {The instability of stablecoins},
  author = {Kun Duan and Andrew Urquhart},
  year = {2022},
  institution = {Elsevier BV},
  journal = {Finance research letters},
  doi = {10.1016/j.frl.2022.103573},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2022.103573},
  note = {Indexed by Stablecoin Beat},
}

Last verified 2026-07-02. All fields shown are verified; 2 tracked fields are not yet recorded.

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