Tron network deposits drop to 6-month low as TRX price rallies — Trouble in paradise?

TRX (TRX), the native token of the Tron network, saw a month-to-date increase of 9.5% in June, significantly outperforming its competitors Solana’s SOL (SOL) and Ether (ETH), which decreased by 9% and 11%, respectively, during the same period. 

Interestingly, TRX’s rise coincided with a wallet linked to Tron founder Justin Sun transferring over $21 million worth of TRX to Binance. Traders now question how sustainable the TRX rally above $0.12 really is.

Justin Sun reportedly sent TRX to Binance on June 27

Data from Arkham Intelligence reveals that on June 27, Sun moved 173.8 million TRX, valued at $21.4 million, to a Binance deposit address. On June 26, Tron’s total value locked (TVL) plummeted to a six-month low of $7.5 billion, according to DefiLlama, suggesting that major investors are pulling funds from the ecosystem despite the price surge of TRX.

An alarming fact is that 75% of the network’s total deposits are concentrated in a single decentralized application, JustLend, which saw a 15% reduction in assets over 30 days. A closer inspection raises concerns about the sustainability of Tron’s ecosystem, especially since an astonishing 94% of JustLend’s deposits are in BTCT, a TRC-20 token purportedly equivalent to a Bitcoin (BTC) position.

Moreover, data from Exponential.fi indicates that the $5.3 billion in BTCT deposits at JustLend yield 0%, suggesting that the primary beneficiary of these assets might be profiting indirectly, rather than typical users of the JustLend decentralized finance application.

Exponential.fi assessed JustLend’s BTC pool as having poor fundamentals due to significant “collateral risk” and a “reflexive” security mechanism used by TRX to mitigate the volatility of other digital assets, in addition to the “high centralization” of network validators. Their risk summary warns of potential total investment loss due to “issues in the underlying chain.”

While there is no direct evidence of wrongdoing, the misalignment of the TRX token price trend with the growth of the Tron network is less than ideal, particularly as none of its decentralized applications are listed in the global rankings of protocols by fees.

Note that Ethereum remains the absolute leader in its ecosystem, with Solana also prominent, featuring applications like Raydium, Jito and Marinade. Although Tron has seen multibillion-dollar volumes in Tether (USDT), it has faced challenges with other stablecoin providers, including U.S.-based issuer Circle.

Circle and Binance end support for USDC on Tron network

On Feb. 20, Circle, the issuer of the second-largest stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), discontinued support for its TRC-20 version, citing trust, safety and transparency concerns. In November 2023, the nonprofit group Campaign for Accountability claimed that Tron had been named “in multiple international law enforcement actions involving billions of dollars in transactions by alleged organized crime groups and sanctioned entities.”

Related: Binance to remove prime brokerage loophole

On March 25, Binance, a leading global crypto exchange, also ended support for USDC on the TRC-20 network. Users had less than two weeks to convert, transfer or withdraw their tokens from Binance, though USDC transactions on other supported blockchains remained unaffected. These incidents have further eroded investor confidence in Tron’s ecosystem, despite the TRX price seemingly unaffected by these uncertainties.

In April 2024, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission reiterated allegations from its original lawsuit that Justin Sun and his companies sold unregistered securities through the Tron and BitTorrent (BTT) tokens and accused Sun of engaging in “manipulative wash trading.” The SEC alleges that TRX and BTT were promoted and sold to “consumers and investors located in the United States.”

Given that TRX has outperformed SOL and ETH by nearly 20% over 30 days, despite a decline in Tron’s network TVL and indications that wallets linked to Sun might be selling, the likelihood of TRX maintaining the $0.12 support level seems doubtful.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.