USDC Stablecoin Depegged

Circle Internet Financial's USDC stablecoin massively depegged from its intended $1 price – a harrowing development for a product designed as a place for investors to safely park money. The USDC/USDT pair (which tracks Circle's coin versus the bigger one issued by Tether) sank as low as $0.869 on the Kraken exchange at 07:16 UTC on March 11,– far lower than it ever got amid the market stresses that followed the FTX debacle in November. It was back around $0.94 as of 18:07 UTC. Stablecoins derive their value from those reserves; if one is worth more than $43 billion – as USDC was earlier on Friday – there should be roughly that much cash or cash-like fixed-income instruments stashed somewhere backing that up. USDC's market capitalization has now slumped below $40 billion. It's worth noting that other stablecoins such as MakerDAO's DAI, FRAX, USDD have also depegged from $1. However, USDT, meanwhile, at one point spiked to $1.06 on Kraken versus the U.S. dollar as investors appeared to shift money away from USDC. Bitcoin climbed back above $20,000.

What's going on with USDC on Optimism?