FDUSD Depegging Leads to $3 Million Arbitrage Gain for Wintermute

Market makers’ blockchain transactions have revealed a potential $3 million arbitrage opportunity related to the depegging of the FDUSD stablecoin. The First Digital US dollar-pegged stablecoin (FDUSD) depegged on April 2, following claims by Tron founder Justin Sun that the stablecoin issuer was insolvent. This event triggered significant market activity, particularly from market maker Wintermute, which transferred over 75 million FDUSD tokens back to First Digital within a day of the depegging, when the stablecoin's value dropped to $0.87.

Blockchain intelligence platform Lookonchain reported that Wintermute likely bought FDUSD at a discount during the depegging event and redeemed it at a 1:1 ratio through First Digital, thereby securing a substantial profit. Wintermute transferred over 31 million FDUSD tokens from Binance shortly after the depegging occurred. Assuming they purchased FDUSD near the bottom at $0.90, they would have made over $3 million when FDUSD returned to its pegged value.

The selling patterns of market makers have been under close scrutiny since the February crypto liquidation event, which saw large-scale selling from multiple market participants, including market makers. However, the crypto market crashes have been directly linked to traditional financial events, such as DeepSeek and Trump’s tariffs, according to Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder of Wintermute.

Despite the insolvency claims, First Digital has assured users that their stablecoin remains fully backed and solvent. They stated that FDUSD is still fully backed and redeemable with the US dollar on a 1:1 basis. First Digital has also announced plans to take legal action against Sun’s false bankruptcy allegations, which led to the stablecoin’s depegging. Some analytics tools have previously highlighted potential weaknesses in FDUSD’s stability, which was rated as 4 or “constrained” according to the S&P Global Ratings’ stablecoin stability assessment. The quality of the assets backing the stablecoin is a critical driver of the final assessment, and weaknesses in other areas, including regulation and supervision, governance, transparency, liquidity and redeemability, and track record, contributed to those stablecoins with lower assessments.