Decentral Block Post

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) said the rise of Binance stablecoin BUSD could spark the “Second Great Stablecoin War,” given how fast its market cap has surged over recent months. 

Bankman-Fried's recent comments come a month after Binance pushed ahead with plans to auto-convert a host of stablecoins supported on its exchange into BUSD on Sept. 6, — which has seen BUSD's share of the total stablecoin market rise since. 

BUSD’s share of the total stablecoin market has risen from 10.01% on Sept. 7 to 15.48% on Oct. 22, according to crypto data aggregator Coin Metrics.

Meanwhile, BUSD’s market cap has risen 3.3% over the last 30 days to $21.7 billion, with the stablecoin only trailing Tether USD (USDT) at $68.4 billion and USD Coin (USDC) at $43.9 billion.

Commenting on the asset’s growth following the move, the FTX CEO noted via Twitter on Oct. 23 that “Binance converts USDC --> BUSD, and we see the change in supplies,” adding “thus begins the second great stablecoin war.”

Bitcoin (BTC) saw fresh gains on Oct. 23 as the weekend delivered a potential launchpad for the bulls.

$10 million liquidations as Bitcoin steps higher

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as it spiked above $19,500 as the weekly close approached.

While modest, the $300 move punctuated otherwise flat trading behavior, Bitcoin notoriously rangebound on daily timeframes.

Now, hopes were high that the market would offer more solid price action in the coming days, $20,000 remaining out of reach for over a week.

"Green week ahead, preferably first closing the current CME gap," popular trader Crypto Ed told Twitter followers in an update at the time of writing.

An army of small Bitcoin (BTC) investors has been fighting with their larger counterparts for months to keep the price above $18,000.

Bitcoin accumulation strong among fishes

Notably, there has been some on-chain divergence between so-called whales (entities that hold more than 1,000 BTC) and fishes (entities that hold relatively smaller amounts of BTC) as Bitcoin continues to fluctuate inside the $18,000-$20,000 area.

Bitcoin fishes have been accumulating BTC during the coin’s sideways trend. For instance, the net Bitcoin supply held by addresses with 100-1,000 BTC balance has increased from 3.71 million in June to 3.77 million in October, according to data provided by Glassnode.

Similarly, the supply of Bitcoin held by addresses with a 10-100 BTC balance has also risen from 3 million to 3.15 million in the same period. The trend is similar across the entities holding anything between 0.001 and 10 BTC.

Meanwhile, the same period of Bitcoin’s sideways price action coincided with a decline in BTC supply held by whales. For instance, the Bitcoin supply held by the 1,000-10,000 BTC cohort has dropped from 3.82 million to 3.69 million since June.