Over the weekend, the crypto market went through one of the craziest trading days we’ve seen in a while. Prices were swinging violently, liquidations were everywhere, and suddenly, a new headline started spreading: “Ethena’s USDe has depegged to 68 cents!” Screenshots from Binance flooded Twitter, and panic set in fast.
But after digging into the data and comparing prices across different exchanges, it turns out that story isn’t quite true. Ethena’s USDe didn’t actually depeg. What really happened was a Binance-specific flash crash triggered by infrastructure strain, a poorly designed oracle, and liquidity bottlenecks during one of the most volatile trading periods in crypto history.
What you'll learn 👉
Understanding the “Depeg” Narrative
Crypto investor Haseeb summed it up perfectly: “It’s like a fire broke out on Binance, but all of the roads were blocked and firefighters couldn’t make their way in.”
During the chaos, Binance’s systems were overwhelmed. The exchange’s APIs were unstable, deposits and withdrawals were delayed, and market makers couldn’t move liquidity between platforms. So while Binance’s chart showed USDe collapsing to around $0.68, it wasn’t because Ethena’s peg failed—it was because nobody could step in to fix the price.
Meanwhile, on other exchanges like Bybit and Curve, USDe stayed remarkably stable. Bybit saw only a small dip to about $0.95 before bouncing right back, and on Curve—the main liquidity venue for USDe—prices barely moved at all. The difference between exchanges tells the whole story: this wasn’t a systemic depeg; it was an isolated liquidity event
To understand what a real depeg looks like, think back to USDC during the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in 2023. When SVB collapsed, Circle lost access to part of its cash reserves, and that fear hit the market instantly. USDC dropped to around $0.88–$0.90 across every exchange. Liquidity dried up, and the stablecoin’s price stayed below $1 for days.
Did Ethena Really Depeg?
— Haseeb ＞|＜ (@hosseeb) October 12, 2025
I’ve seen a lot of chatter about the Ethena depeg during the market mayhem this weekend. The story is that USDe briefly depegged to ~68c before recovering. Here’s the Binance chart everyone is quoting:
But digging into the data and talking to a bunch of… https://t.co/ln0fEeVc5E pic.twitter.com/lQuZrQbL7f
That was a true depeg—confidence broke, and the entire market reflected it. Every chart showed the same trend, no matter where you looked.
Now, compare that to USDe. On Binance, yes, it fell sharply. But everywhere else, it held up fine. That’s the key difference. The USDC depeg was global; the USDe event was local.
The USDe Incident: Multi-Exchange Comparison
If you plot USDe’s price across Binance, Bybit, and Curve, you’ll notice just how isolated the problem was. Binance’s price chart plunged dramatically, touching $0.68 before slowly recovering. Bybit only dipped briefly to $0.95, and Curve barely moved at all—just a minor 0.3% deviation from its peg.
What this shows is that Binance’s systems couldn’t handle the market pressure. Market makers couldn’t bridge liquidity or execute arbitrage trades, meaning the price on Binance became disconnected from the true value of USDe. It wasn’t that USDe lost its peg; it’s that Binance lost its footing.
The Binance Flash Crash
Looking directly at Binance’s USDe/USDT chart, the pattern is unmistakable. Within one 15-minute candle, the price crashed straight down to around $0.68, only to rebound almost immediately. Volume exploded during that window—evidence of forced liquidations and thin liquidity rather than organic selling.
Once Binance’s systems stabilized, the price returned to $0.998, right where it should be. Later, Binance even acknowledged the issue. Its oracle had misfired, triggering liquidations based on the exchange’s own distorted price feed instead of referencing the broader market. That’s why Binance promised to refund affected traders—it was their own internal failure, not a reflection of Ethena’s stability.
Why This Wasn’t a True Depeg
A genuine stablecoin depeg happens when confidence breaks across all venues, and the price stays below $1 for a sustained period. That’s not what happened here.
On Curve, USDe stayed pegged. On Bybit, it bounced back within minutes. Binance was the only platform showing a major drop, and it did so because its infrastructure and liquidity channels broke down in the middle of extreme market volatility.
So, what looked like a collapse in value was really just a flash crash limited to one exchange, not a failure of Ethena’s peg design.
Read also: How High Can Ethena (ENA) Price Go in October?
The Bigger Lesson
This whole episode is a reminder of how much market structure matters in crypto. Decentralized venues like Curve, with deep on-chain liquidity and automated market making, held up perfectly even under stress. Centralized exchanges like Binance, on the other hand, rely heavily on isolated order books and manual liquidity flows—and when those systems falter, things can go wrong fast.
For stablecoin issuers, this highlights why having primary dealer relationships and cross-venue liquidity integrations is so important. And for traders, it’s a good lesson too: when you see a “depeg” on one exchange, don’t jump to conclusions. Always check other markets before assuming the peg is broken.
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