Weekly recap: $11.32M, the biggest week we've measured

$11.32M

This week

up 1.5%, an all-time high

112,944

Deposits

a record, 9.4% above the last

38,091

Active wallets

also a record

43.6%

Quidax share

down from a 48.5% peak

Retail stablecoin volume across the 14 venues we track reached $11,323,928 in the week of 10 to 16 August. It is the largest week we have measured in 328 weeks of coverage.

Deposits and active wallets set records in the same week — 112,944 and 38,091.

Three records at once is less interesting than the gap between them. Volume beat its previous best by 1.3%. Deposits beat theirs by 9.4%. The week grew because more people transacted more often, not because the money moved in bigger pieces. The average deposit fell to $100 from $108.

Quidax fell and the market rose anyway

Quidax dropped 5.7% to $4,936,311. The market went up 1.5% regardless, because the other thirteen venues grew 7.9% between them.

Its share of everything we measure has now fallen three weeks running:

• 27 July — 48.5%, the highest we had recorded
• 3 August — 46.9%
• 10 August — 43.6%

Three weeks ago we wrote that at 48% share Quidax was less a constituent of this index than a proxy for it. That is measurably less true than it was. Whether it stays that way is a different question — three weeks is a direction, not a trend, and a single strong Quidax week would undo most of it.

Eight of fourteen grew

Not a clean sweep. Breet added 23.4% to $1,122,763 and Busha 25.1% to $923,487, both recovering from soft weeks. Onboard grew 29.4%, its third consecutive week of recovery after the 70% fall we reported at the start of the month. SFX grew 65.7% from a small base.

Against that, Bayse fell 48.5%, Azza 17.2%, and Chipper 6.1% — more on Chipper below.

Spenda processed 76,845 deposits from 27,213 addresses, its own record and more depositing addresses than any other venue we track. Its average deposit is $32.

Native stablecoins

Transfer volume across the native African stablecoins we track came to $2,935,494, down 5.9%.

cNGN was $2,813,872 of it — 95.9% — and grew 7.4% on 29,577 transfers at an average of $95. Rising count, falling average: the same participation-led shape visible in the venue data.

ZARP fell 87.3% to $62,678 across 147 transfers.

Last Monday we reported ZARP up 737% and said a move that size on 323 transfers described a handful of transfers rather than a trend, and that we would not report it as one. It has now given back almost all of it. nTZS is up 1,028% this week on 176 transfers, and we would treat that exactly the same way.

Chipper: the follow-up

Two weeks ago we reported that Chipper's volume had grown while its active wallets fell, and set out what would separate the two readings. Wallets stabilising and climbing would suggest a genuine new cohort. Wallets flat or falling alongside a high average deposit would suggest concentrated flow that would leave as quickly as it arrived.

This week active wallets went from 668 to 695, deposits from 1,326 to 1,491, and the average deposit fell from $835 to $697. Volume eased 6.1%.

More addresses, more deposits, smaller each. That is the cohort reading, and it is the first week the data has pointed clearly at one of them. We would still want a third and fourth week before calling it — but the concentrated-flow reading now has less to support it than it did.