Stablecoin weekly: the $1.35B drain hides a Solana split (2026)

The seven-day snapshot is negative again, but the shape has changed. USDT now supplies most of the contraction, while USDC is losing ground on Ethereum and adding it on Solana. DAI is effectively flat. That is a chain rotation inside a shrinking base—not a broad liquidity refill.

Snapshot: August 5, 2026, 08:00 (UTC-05:00). DeFiLlama's current and circulatingPrevWeek fields are compared below; figures are rounded and may not reconcile after rounding. The last two market ticks were fetched a few minutes after the scheduled cutoff.

Bottom line

Asset	Current supply	Previous-week supply	7-day change	Change
USDT	$182.823B	$183.946B	-$1.123B	-0.61%
USDC	$72.158B	$72.395B	-$236.5M	-0.33%
DAI	$4.811B	$4.803B	+$8.2M	+0.17%
USDT + USDC + DAI	$259.793B	$261.144B	-$1.351B	-0.52%

Source: DeFiLlama Stablecoins API. Circle's own page showed $72.0B USDC in circulation as of August 3, a close cross-check for the current USDC level. 1

The aggregate contraction is slightly larger than last week's $1.257B decline, but the leader has changed: USDT contributes about 83% of this week's drop, USDC about 17%, and DAI offsets only $8.2M. The headline is not simply "stablecoins are leaving"; it is that the largest dollar-liquidity rail is shrinking while USDC is being repositioned across chains.

The chain map: USDT drains, USDC rotates

The tables show the major named chains returned by the snapshot. Other chains is the residual of the API's full chain list, not a bridge-flow estimate. Chains with no non-zero record are omitted.

USDT

Chain	Current supply	7-day change
Tron	$89.556B	-$25.8M
Ethereum	$74.855B	-$584.0M
BSC	$9.177B	+$0.1M
Solana	$3.158B	-$279.7M
Polygon	$839.9M	-$21.3M
Aptos	$886.4M	-$40.0M
Arbitrum	$827.3M	-$72.8M
Plasma	$670.2M	-$43.8M
Mantle	$451.2M	+$6.4M
Other chains	$2.394B	-$70.1M

USDT is not showing the same Solana-absorption pattern seen in the prior report. Tron remains almost flat, but Ethereum and Solana together lose $863.7M; Arbitrum and Plasma add further drag. The small positive moves on BSC and Mantle are not large enough to change the direction.

USDC

Chain	Current supply	7-day change
Ethereum	$46.139B	-$412.6M
Solana	$7.044B	+$328.1M
Hyperliquid L1	$6.086B	-$46.6M
Base	$4.171B	-$15.9M
Arbitrum	$2.214B	+$22.0M
Polygon	$1.644B	-$32.0M
BSC	$1.581B	+$0.0M
Avalanche	$447.5M	+$25.7M
Stellar	$340.5M	-$22.5M
Aptos	$227.9M	-$67.4M
Other chains	$2.262B	-$15.3M

USDC's Solana gain offsets roughly 80% of its Ethereum loss, but it does not offset the rest of the network-wide decline. Solana's balance is now about $7.04B, while Ethereum still holds $46.14B; the move is material, but it is a redistribution of an asset whose total supply still fell $236.5M.

DAI

Chain	Current supply	7-day change
Ethereum	$4.131B	+$13.6M
Polygon	$545.7M	-$5.5M
BSC	$31.1M	$0.0M
Arbitrum	$18.6M	+$16.4K
Avalanche	$10.7M	$0.0M
PulseChain	$12.5M	+$158.5K
OP Mainnet	$13.7M	-$4.6K
Kaia	$8.0M	-$2.2K
Other chains	$40.6M	-$70.4K

DAI is a stabilizer at the margin, not a new liquidity engine. Its $8.2M increase is concentrated on Ethereum and is small beside the USDT decline.

Issuer alerts: large mints are not the same as new demand

Whale Alert recorded nine 250M USDC mints at USDC Treasury on Solana between July 29 and August 4, totaling $2.25B, plus one 100.645M USDC burn at USDC Treasury on Ethereum on July 31. The timestamps below are converted to UTC-05:00. These are issuer or treasury operations; without evidence of end-user deployment, they should not be counted as $2.25B of fresh market buying power.

Time	Event	Chain	Amount	Primary record
Jul 29, 11:17	USDC Treasury mint	Solana	250.000M	Whale Alert
Jul 30, 04:59	USDC Treasury mint	Solana	250.000M	Whale Alert
Jul 30, 16:16	USDC Treasury mint	Solana	250.000M	Whale Alert
Jul 30, 16:30	USDC Treasury mint	Solana	250.000M	Whale Alert
Jul 31, 11:36	USDC Treasury burn	Ethereum	100.645M	Whale Alert
Aug 2, 20:59	USDC Treasury mint	Solana	250.000M	Whale Alert
Aug 3, 09:22	USDC Treasury mint	Solana	250.000M	Whale Alert
Aug 4, 03:29	USDC Treasury mint	Solana	250.000M	Whale Alert
Aug 4, 03:40	USDC Treasury mint	Solana	250.000M	Whale Alert
Aug 4, 16:38	USDC Treasury mint	Solana	250.000M	Whale Alert

Two more issuer-related alerts arrived before the report cutoff on August 5: 300M USDT moved from Tether Treasury to an unknown Ethereum wallet at 03:00, and 500M USDT moved from Tether Treasury to Binance on Tron at 05:58. 2 3

Neither alert is a mint or burn. A treasury-to-exchange transfer can be inventory positioning or an operational step; it is not proof that users have added $500M of buying power. That caution matters here because the weekly chain snapshot still shows USDT down on Tron and down sharply on Ethereum and Solana.

No comparable, timestamped Maker/Sky DAI mint-and-burn ledger or categorized non-issuer whale event was verified for this window. The issuer alerts above are therefore evidence of treasury activity, not a complete whale-flow census.

Market cross-check

Asset / indicator	Snapshot	7-day or latest change
BTC	$64,278.15	-0.33% over 7 days; +0.99% over 24 hours
ETH	$1,873.82	-1.62% over 7 days; +0.65% over 24 hours
Crypto Fear & Greed	27, Fear	Previous reading: 25, Extreme Fear

BTC and ETH are both lower over seven days, while the daily move is modestly positive. The sentiment gauge has improved from Extreme Fear to Fear, but that has not yet translated into broad stablecoin expansion. 4 5 6

What this snapshot can—and cannot—say

The positive signal is specific: Solana is absorbing USDC, and the issuer alert stream shows that Solana is an active USDC issuance rail. The negative signal is broader: Big-3 supply is down $1.351B, USDT is responsible for most of the decline, and USDC's Solana growth is smaller than its Ethereum loss plus the declines on other chains.

This is best read as defensive liquidity with internal routing, not as a clean risk-on signal. Traders watching for an improving setup should separate three questions:

Is aggregate supply growing? Not in this snapshot.
Is capital moving to a particular rail? Yes: the clearest move is USDC toward Solana, while USDT loses supply on Ethereum and Solana.
Is that capital available to buy risk assets? This report cannot establish that from issuer alerts alone.

Two requested series remain unverified for this edition: DeFiLlama's bridge endpoint returned a subscription prompt rather than a usable pair-by-pair flow table, and no comparable public seven-day series for combined USDT + USDC balances held on major exchanges was available to verify. 7 Funding rates are also not included; Fear & Greed is the available sentiment cross-check.

The next useful confirmation would be a second week of USDC growth on Solana without another Ethereum drawdown, a turn positive in USDT's Tron balance, and a verified rise in exchange-held stablecoins. Until then, the liquidity barometer remains mildly negative even though one major chain is receiving a visible USDC rotation.

Method note: Supply figures are from DeFiLlama's asset and chain snapshots. Issuer events are linked to Whale Alert's public event records and are not treated as proof of end-user demand. Market snapshots use the linked public APIs. All timestamps in the article are displayed in UTC-05:00.

This report is informational and does not constitute investment advice.