USDC's Gauge Climbs As TVL Drains

USDC's DEX liquidity score climbed from 65 to 78 this week, the loudest item on the board, even as the TVL behind it drained from $5.40B to $4.17B. That is a fuel gauge reading full while the tank loses more than a billion dollars. PSI never noticed, holding the BEDROCK band all seven days between 91.8 and 94.1 and closing at 92.8, a hair off the 92.5 open. Circle spent the week feeding USDC, adding $1.67B over seven days before the tap narrowed to $52.42M in the final one. USDC ran as the largest weekly mover on four separate days, from +$765.61M on the 21st to the +$1.67B peak by the 24th. The yield desk kept flagging the same two names, USDT at 4.22% APY and USDC at 9.83%, both stamped opportunity-evidence-missing, which is the analytics way of saying the number arrived without a receipt. While USDC's figures puffed up, USDS liquidity collapsed: TVL fell from $162.28M to $13.72M and its score slid 59 to 49 on the 21st before clawing back +10 the next day. DAI went the other way, lifting its score +9 then +8 to 56, and USD1 gained +9 as its TVL nearly doubled from $51.80M to $89.83M. The chronic pmUSD depeg stayed broken at 4433 bps on $52.32M, unmoved and unresolved. Aggregate market cap added 0.48% to $318.06B, a rounding error dressed as growth. The louder week-over-week move was the Bank Run Gauge midpoint swinging from -5.4 to 12.0, even after bottoming at -17.7 on the 22nd. Freezing cooled sharply: 82 blacklist events worth $15.14M this week against 106 events and $51.53M last, most of it USDT on Tron in a single $4.59M action on the 22nd. The forward-look scoreboard closed 13 hit, 7 missed, one still pending, and the misses were mostly bets that USDC's supply surge would keep its liquidity honest. Next week decides whether $4.17B is the USDC TVL floor or the first step down; watch the score-versus-TVL gap if Circle's minting stays near this week's $52.42M crawl rather than its $1.67B sprint.