Justin Sun’s USDD Stablecoin Loses Bitcoin Backing

The USDD stablecoin, issued by the TRON DAO Reserve, has lost its Bitcoin backing with the removal of 12,000 BTC from its formerly listed collateral address. Without the Bitcoin, worth around $726 million, USDD is now primarily backed by TRX, the native token of the Tron blockchain.

The move—spotted on X on Tuesday—was made without any apparent official action by the TRON DAO. Responding to reports of the shift, Tron founder Justin Sun said on X (aka Twitter) that what’s happening is “not mysterious.”

“Any collateral holder can withdraw any amount freely without anyone’s approval,” Sun wrote, comparing the operation to that of MakerDAO. He said that USDD was not capital efficiant, and had a “long-term collateralization rate” of more than 300%.

lmao @justinsuntron silently removed the 12.000 btc as USDD collateral recently and it’s now 100% backed by tron (except for 20mil. usdt).

This was the address: 1KVpuCfhftkzJ67ZUegaMuaYey7qni7pPj

— Symbio (@NoCryptFish) August 21, 2024

“The TRON DAO Reserve plans to spend time upgrading USDD in the future to make it a more competitive decentralized stablecoin in the market,” Sun added.

His declaration of the DAO’s plans did not address whether the ostensibly decentralized organization was involved in the change.

USDD was originally an algorithmic stablecoin, similar to Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin UST—which spectacularly collapsed in May 2022. It was then converted into a hybrid model where it would be backed by collateral including Bitcoin, TRX, USDT, and USDC.

Regarding the decentralized stablecoin USDD, its mechanism is similar to MakerDAO’s DAI and is not mysterious. When your collateral exceeds the amount specified by the system (usually between 120%-150% depending on the vault), any collateral holder can withdraw any amount freely…

— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨(hiring) (@justinsuntron) August 22, 2024

The market cap of USDD, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar, is around $744 million, according to CoinGecko data. It remains among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap—albeit just barely, ranked 96th—and was recently surpassed by a PYUSD, a new stablecoin from PayPal.

TRX, now the source of its primary backing, is more volatile, holding on to a top 10 spot excluding stablecoins. Currently trading for $0.15, it has surged in recent weeks as Tron and Sun have leaned heavily into leveraging it as a memecoin marketplace.

TRX is up more than double its value a year ago, with a $13.5 billion market cap.

The Tron ecosystem recently surpassed Solana to be the second-largest blockchain by TVL (total value locked), with $8.2 billion across more than 30 different decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, according to data from DeFi Llama.