A stablecoin is supposed to be worth one dollar, always. We checked how often that was true. We took every daily candle of nine stablecoins on Binance since 2018, added USDT itself from Coinbase, then went minute by minute through three of the biggest breaks, and rebuilt the hours Binance's data doesn't have from 275,828 trades on Kraken.
- UST is the only one whose data never came back near $1. It closed at $0.754 on 9 May 2022 and $0.246 four days later, when Binance's UST data ends.
- USDC's worst hours aren't in Binance's data. In the Silicon Valley Bank weekend, USDC traded at $0.874 on Kraken at 07:15 UTC on 11 March 2023. Binance's archive has no USDC/USDT candles from September 2022 until 14:00 UTC that day.
- USDe fell to $0.65 on Binance on 10 October 2025 and closed the day at $0.998. It spent 45 minutes under $0.95.
- USDT never closed more than 1% from $1 on Coinbase (May 2021 to October 2026). Its lowest trade was $0.941, in Terra's collapse week. In the SVB weekend it went the other way, above $1.
- Many "depegs" in old charts look like USDT's own moves. On 15 October 2018 TUSD and USDP closed 5-6% above USDT; on 26 April 2019 TUSD, USDP and USDC closed 3-4% above it.
I remember constant talk back in 2017 about USDT losing its dollar. It had its scares, about $0.925 in 2018 and $0.941 in 2022, but the collapse people feared never came, and they seem to have become less afraid over the years. Terra was another story. I watched that collapse in real time, and it's probably the downside of algorithmic coins like UST: no cash behind them when confidence goes.
| Stablecoin | Days measured | Closed >0.5% off $1 | Closed >1% off | Worst daily close | Lowest trade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UST (Terra) | 138 | 9 (6.5%) | 5 (3.6%) | 0.2458 (13 May 2022) | 0.2250 (11 May 2022) |
| TUSD | 2,877 | 271 (9.4%) | 143 (5.0%) | 1.0560 (15 Oct 2018) | 0.4654 (29 Jan 2021) |
| USDP (Pax Dollar) | 2,742 | 169 (6.2%) | 81 (3.0%) | 1.0504 (15 Oct 2018) | 0.9388 (4 Feb 2021) |
| USDS (Stably, 2019-20) | 494 | 137 (27.7%) | 30 (6.1%) | 1.0356 (28 Apr 2019) | 0.9002 (12 Mar 2020) |
| USDC | 2,679 | 112 (4.2%) | 38 (1.4%) | 0.9592 (11 Mar 2023) | 0.2000 (4 Dec 2021) |
| FDUSD | 1,160 | 4 (0.3%) | 1 (0.1%) | 0.9860 (2 Apr 2025) | 0.8726 (2 Apr 2025) |
| BUSD | 1,545 | 3 (0.2%) | 0 | 0.9911 (13 Mar 2020) | 0.9700 (18 Apr 2021) |
| USDT (Coinbase, in dollars) | 1,974 | 2 (0.1%) | 0 | 1.0078 (12 Mar 2023) | 0.9410 (12 May 2022) |
| USDe | 384 | 0 | 0 | 0.9978 (10 Oct 2025) | 0.6500 (10 Oct 2025) |
| USDS (Sky, 2026) | 172 | 0 | 0 | 1.0013 (25 Jun 2026) | 0.9600 (14 Apr 2026) |
Binance prices are against USDT, the quote of every Binance pair we used; USDT itself is measured against the dollar on Coinbase. A day counts as a depeg by its closing price; the "lowest trade" column is the day's lowest print, which on thin order books can be a single odd trade (see Why we count closes).
UST: the one that didn't come back
Terra's UST was an algorithmic stablecoin: no cash behind it, only a mechanism linking it to the LUNA token.
On 7 and 8 May 2022 it closed at $0.994 and $0.995. Then:
| Day (2022) | Close | Lowest trade |
|---|---|---|
| 9 May | 0.754 | 0.751 |
| 10 May | 0.799 | 0.607 |
| 11 May | 0.760 | 0.225 |
| 12 May | 0.364 | 0.267 |
| 13 May | 0.246 | 0.240 |
Binance's UST/USDT data stops on 13 May. UST went from a dollar to a quarter in five days. It is the only coin in this table whose data doesn't end back near $1: every other one's last close is within 0.4% of it.
USDC and the SVB weekend: the worst hours aren't in Binance's data
Silicon Valley Bank, where Circle held part of USDC's cash reserves, was closed by US regulators on Friday 10 March 2023.
Binance's daily data says USDC closed at $0.9592 on 11 March, with a low of $0.882. That is not the whole story, because Binance wasn't listing USDC/USDT at the time: its data has no USDC/USDT candles after 26 September 2022 until 14:00 UTC on 11 March 2023, the middle of the crisis.
So we rebuilt those hours from Kraken's public trade history: 275,828 USDC/USD trades from 10 to 13 March.
- USDC first closed a minute under $0.99 at 03:10 UTC on Saturday 11 March.
- Its lowest trade was $0.874 at 07:15 UTC, almost seven hours before Binance relisted it. Its one-minute close was under $0.90 in 73 minutes, between 06:42 and 08:22 UTC.
- It spent 888 traded minutes (14.8 hours) under $0.95, spread over 28.6 hours, until 08:13 UTC on Sunday.
- Its first hourly close above $0.99 since early Saturday came at the end of the 22:00 UTC hour on Sunday 12 March, the evening US regulators said all of SVB's depositors would be covered. It slipped back under $0.99 late on Sunday and for most of 10:28 to 12:52 UTC on Monday.
Do the two exchanges agree? At first sight, not well: in the 3,409 minutes both traded, their closes were within 1% of each other only 69.6% of the time. But Binance prices USDC in USDT, Kraken in dollars, and USDT wasn't worth a dollar that weekend either: it traded above $1. Converting Kraken's price into USDT minute by minute (USDT/USD's one-minute close on Kraken peaked at $1.0186, at 19:49 UTC on 12 March), the two exchanges agree within 1% in 99.7% of shared minutes (median gap 0.06%).
USDe: a 45-minute break on crash day
10 October 2025 was one of the wildest days in crypto: bitcoin fell 7.3% that day, and the exchanges we track posted 11 unplanned incidents. On Binance, Ethena's USDe:
- fell under $0.99 at 21:20 UTC and stayed there, on and off, until 22:53 UTC;
- traded as low as $0.65 at 21:54 UTC; its lowest one-minute close was $0.665, at 21:43, a minute in which 18.0 million USDe changed hands;
- closed under $0.95 for 45 minutes in all, and under $0.90 for 18.
By the end of the UTC day it closed at $0.9978. On the daily chart, it looks like a single wick; in the minute data it was a real 45-minute break with real volume. We measured Binance only; other venues' prices that evening are not in this data.
FDUSD, April 2025
First Digital USD dropped on 2 April 2025, after public claims about its issuer's solvency, which the issuer denied.
On Binance, FDUSD traded as low as $0.8726 at 15:53 UTC. Its one-minute closes were under $0.98 for 167 minutes and under $0.95 for 10; from 15:33 to 02:05 UTC it was under $0.99 for 630 of 633 minutes. It closed the day at $0.986, its only day more than 1% off in three years of data.
TUSD's long slide in early 2024
Not every depeg is a crash. TUSD closed more than 0.5% off $1 on 53 days between January and March 2024, as low as $0.9598 on 28 February. In all of 2024 it closed more than 1% off on 54 days: more than in 2019 (30), nearly as many as in 2018 (58), and against one day in all the other years from 2020 on.
USDT: when the yardstick moves
Every Binance price in this data is in USDT, so a move in USDT looks like a move in the coin. Two of the biggest "depegs" in the data are really USDT's:
- 15 October 2018: TUSD closed at 1.056 USDT and USDP at 1.050. USDT itself had fallen to about $0.925 that morning on doubts about its reserves (Bloomberg, 15 October 2018).
- 26 April 2019: USDC and Stably's USDS closed at 1.032 USDT, the day after New York's attorney general accused Bitfinex and Tether of covering up an $850 million loss (25 April 2019; Bitfinex disputed it). On 25 April the four coins had already closed 1.6-1.9% above USDT.
From May 2021, when Coinbase's USDT-USD data starts, USDT never closed more than 1% from $1. Its lowest trade was $0.941 on 12 May 2022, Terra's collapse week. Its only two days more than 0.5% off were above $1: 11 and 12 March 2023, the SVB weekend.
Why we count closes, not wicks
A daily candle's low is a single trade. On a thin order book that can be anything: on its listing day BUSD printed 0.0005 and 306, USDP once printed 999, and TUSD 3.00. None of those were a stablecoin losing its peg. So a day counts as a depeg only by its closing price, wicks are reported separately, and each pair's first three trading days are left out. Where a break mattered, we went to the minute data to see how long it really lasted.
Watching a peg yourself
TabChart charts stablecoin pairs such as USDC/USDT and FDUSD/USDT live from Binance and six other exchanges, the way the screenshots above were made. To be told when a peg slips, set a Crossing price alert at, say, 0.99 with the direction down: it can notify you by desktop popup, email, Telegram, webhook or by launching a program. Alerts run while TabChart is open; they are not server-side. Download TabChart (free, Windows).
How we tested
| Coins | USDC, USDT, UST, TUSD, USDP (Pax Dollar), BUSD, FDUSD, USDe, Stably's USDS (2019-20) and Sky's USDS (2026), which reused the same Binance symbol |
| Data | Binance's public data archive: 493 daily-candle files, plus the 1-minute files for March 2023, April 2025 and October 2025, each checked against Binance's published SHA-256. Coinbase's USDT-USD daily candles. Kraken's public trade history for USDC/USD and USDT/USD, 10-13 March 2023 |
| Period | Each coin's full Binance history up to 30 September 2026 (USDT on Coinbase: May 2021 to 1 October 2026) |
| A depeg day | The daily close more than 0.5% or 1% away from $1; each pair's first 3 days excluded; wicks reported apart |
| Prices | Against USDT on Binance; against the dollar on Coinbase and Kraken. Kraken's minute bars are built from its trades (minutes without trades have no bar) |
| Not in it | DAI (Binance's DAI/USDT archive covers only July and August 2020), coins Binance never listed, and other exchanges' prices except Kraken's for the SVB weekend |
Download the data: days.csv (every coin, every day: low, high, close) · the CSV behind each chart : t4-days-off-peg.csv, t4-usdc-svb-weekend.csv.
FAQ
What is a stablecoin depeg? When a coin meant to be worth $1 trades noticeably away from it. We count a day as a depeg when the coin closed more than 0.5% (or 1%) away from $1.
Has USDC ever depegged? Yes, once badly: in the Silicon Valley Bank weekend of March 2023 it traded as low as $0.874 on Kraken and spent 14.8 hours of trading under $0.95. It was back above $0.99 for good after 12:52 UTC on Monday 13 March.
Has USDT ever depegged? Not by our measure since 2021: on Coinbase it never closed more than 1% from $1. It dipped to $0.941 intraday on 12 May 2022 and traded above $1 in March 2023 (its one-minute close on Kraken peaked at $1.0186). Earlier, in October 2018, it fell to about $0.925.
Which stablecoin's depeg never came back? In this data, Terra's UST: from $0.995 on 8 May 2022 to $0.246 on 13 May, when Binance's UST data ends.
How long do depegs last? From minutes to days. USDe's October 2025 break lasted 45 minutes under $0.95, FDUSD's April 2025 drop about 10 hours under $0.99, USDC's SVB depeg about 45 trading hours under $0.99, spread over 2.4 days (03:10 UTC on 11 March to 12:52 UTC on 13 March, on Kraken). UST's data ends below $0.25.
This is historical market data, not financial advice.
