---
title: "USDC Shrinks, Market Cap Barely Moves"
canonical: "https://pharos.watch/digest/2026-10-02/"
datePublished: "2026-10-02T08:06:05.000Z"
description: "USDC's supply fell $2.28B in seven days while total stablecoin market cap slipped only $443.5M; USDT and PYUSD added $399.76M between them in a single day."
---

# USDC Shrinks, Market Cap Barely Moves

## Executive Summary

USDC's supply fell $2.28B in seven days while total stablecoin market cap slipped only $443.5M; USDT and PYUSD added $399.76M between them in a single day.

## Extended

USDC's outstanding supply fell $2.28B over seven days to $74.16B, the largest weekly move among tracked coins and 7% below its April 11 high of $79.75B. Total stablecoin market cap fell only $443.5M over the same window. By subtraction, that leaves roughly $1.8B of net issuance elsewhere, on a baseline covering 238 of 248 core coins. The data record fewer USDC tokens; nothing here establishes why.

Part of that offset is visible in the daily figures. USDT added $294.04M in one day against $387.15M for the week, and PYUSD added $105.72M against $130.02M; both are accelerating. On-chain, USDf netted $101.71M of mints over 24 hours while RLUSD netted $112.42M of burns, and Arbitrum led chains at +$95.05M net. The Bank Run Gauge improved to -17.8 from -23.6 and remains in its CAUTIOUS band.

PSI read 93.2, extending a 90-day BEDROCK streak, while the DEWS count of coins at ALERT rose to 9 from 7. Avalon's USDA remains critical at a stored peak of 3,098 bps below peg, with no live price available, on $145.56M of supply. Next trigger: a seven-day USDC decline beyond $3B would make this a sustained contraction rather than one large week, and a Gauge reading of -25 or lower would put flow stress at the front.