Wharton Crypto Insights

Binance USD Written by Brett Hemenway Falk Binance USD was a dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Paxos. Native USDT and USDC are not available on the BNB chain, and BUSD was the dominant stablecoin available on the BNB chain. Despite its name, BUSD was not issued directly on the BNB chain. Instead, Paxos issued BUSD…Read More

Ethena's Synthetic Dollar Token Written by Brett Hemenway Falk To understand Ethena's USDe, it is useful to consider it in relation to other stablecoins. Fiat-backed stablecoins like USDT or USDC are backed by dollar-denominated assets (e.g. short-term treasuries) held off-chain by their issuer (Tether or Circle). Since USDT and USDC…Read More

USDC on Polygon Written by Brett Hemenway Falk Circle launched USDC on Polygon in October 2023. Prior to the launch of "native" USDC on Polygon, Polygon users could access "Bridge-Wrapped" USDC (with ticker symbol USDC.e). USDC.e was a derivative token, issued by the Polygon Bridge. Because it is impossible to…Read More

Stablecoin Price Data Written by Brett Hemenway Falk As of February 2025, the top three stablecoins by market cap are USDT, USDC, and USDe. This repository contains scripts for scraping stablecoin price data from Alchemy, and plotting the data. The plot below shows big dips in the USDC price at…Read More

Three Trillion PyUSD Minted Written by Brett Hemenway Falk On October 16th 2025, PayPal accidentally minted Three Trillion PyUSD. This mistake was an embarrassment for Paxos and PayPal, but did not directly result in the loss of user funds. PyUSD The PyUSD contract is available on Github. All of its…Read More

The Ethereum Merge and the Prospect of a New Currency Written by Brett Hemenway Falk When a blockchain like Ethereum goes through a hard fork, validators can choose whether transition to the new chain, or continue to validate on the legacy chain (or both). If enough validators continue to keep…Read More