Weekly recap: last Monday's record was 29% too small

$18.96M

This week

down 4.8%, second-largest ever

+28.8%

Restatement to last week

$15.46M published, $19.92M actual

−6.9%

Like-for-like

the same 17 venues as last week's issue

6 of 19

Venues that grew

thirteen fell

Retail stablecoin volume across the 19 venues we now track was $18,955,618 in the week of 24 to 30 August. That is the second-largest week in 330 weeks of coverage, down 4.8%.

The number it is down 4.8% from is the part worth reading.

What we published last Monday was 29% short

On 24 August this newsletter led with $15.46M, an all-time high. That same week now reads $19,919,011 — a 28.8% upward restatement.

We did not get the arithmetic wrong. We could not see a quarter of the market.

• $4,242,077 of the restatement is Monica and Raenest entering coverage during the week.
• $213,406 is ordinary attribution drift, the sub-2% movement we see on every closed week.

So the record was real, and it was also 29% smaller than the market it was measuring.

The underlying market fell harder than the headline

Monica grew 2.0% while nearly everything else declined, so the new coverage cushioned the fall rather than causing it.

Deposits fell to 156,398, from 159,144. Active wallets fell to 49,703 from 51,063. The average deposit came down from $125 to $121. All three are still the second- or third-highest we have recorded; all three are below last week.

Six of nineteen venues grew. Thirteen fell.

Where it sits

Quidax held first at $5,027,614, down 2.5%, its share slipping to 26.5%. Monica arrives directly in second at $4,217,122 and 22.3%. Spenda grew 8.6% to $2,920,023 and again processed more deposits than any other venue — 72,890 from 26,364 wallets.

The top three are now 64.2% of everything we measure.

Daya Pro fell 28.2% to $2,017,059 — and that is still 4.5 times its nine-week average of $447,000. We flagged last Monday that its record might be a single event. It was not. The level held.

Elsewhere: Grey Finance +4.8%, Raenest +30.3% off a small base, Busha −2.0%, Breet −14.7%, Chipper −19.1%, Timon −23.7%, Accrue −61.2%.

The native layer came off with it

Transfer volume across the native African stablecoins we track was $6,034,770, down 23.5%, on 15,417 transfers, down 24.2%.

cNGN was $5,585,193 of it, down 28.5%. Its average transfer held at $432, against $444 last week — so the step change we reported seven days ago in how cNGN moves has persisted even as the volume receded. Fewer, larger transfers is now the shape, not a one-week artefact.

Celo did not hold. The deployment we reported as up 670% two weeks ago fell 70.1%, from $1,616,782 to $482,915, and its transfer count fell 44.8% from 839 to 463. When we published that note we said the signal to watch was transfer counts continuing to climb. They did not. That call resolves negative and we are saying so here rather than letting it go quiet.

Two Mondays, one lesson

Last week the market set a record on concentration. This week it gave part of it back.

Neither of those is the largest thing that happened to our numbers. Adding one venue moved the measured market 28.8% — more than any weekly change we have ever reported. That is worth its own note.