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Pietro Saggese, Michael Sigmund, Burkhard Raunig, Esther Segalla, Bernhard Haslhofer, Christos Makridis · 2026-07-09
Using an Austrian regulatory registry that directly identifies crypto service providers' blockchain addresses, the authors reconstruct actual on-chain transactions in Bitcoin, Ether, USDC and USDT through May 2025, separating retail-like from institutional flows. They find these providers move roughly USD 30 billion, are globally rather than domestically integrated, and that during three crises (Terra-Luna, FTX, SVB) retail and institutional participants behaved differently and stablecoins did not act as a uniform safe haven.
Why it matters: The study offers a concrete look at how stablecoin flows and crypto market participants actually behave under stress, showing that 'safe haven' assumptions about stablecoins can break down and differ by participant type. For anyone exposed to stablecoins or crypto intermediaries, it highlights redemption-mechanism and counterparty risks that only become visible in transaction-level data.
⚠ This is a descriptive, single-jurisdiction (Austria) measurement study of past crisis episodes, not a trading strategy or predictive tool.
Cryptoassets are increasingly entangled with the traditional financial system, and how this activity integrates into national economies and behaves under stress bears on financial stability and the design of public digital money. However, blockchain pseudonymity and the lack of geographic identifiers force existing work to rely on indirect proxies to infer and locate market participants. Here we use a regulatory registry that directly identifies the on-chain addresses of all crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) registered in Austria, reconstructing their on-chain transaction activity across Bitcoin, Ether, USDC, and USDT through May 2025, and separating retail-like from institutionally mediated flows. We find that Austrian CASPs intermediate roughly USD 30 billion with external counterparties and are integrated globally rather than domestically. In value, this activity is dominated by a few institutional counterparties; in number, by retail-like ones. Around three major shocks, the Terra-Luna collapse, the FTX bankruptcy, and the Silicon Valley Bank failure, the two groups respond through different mechanisms, and stablecoins do not act as a uniform safe haven. The clearest case is SVB, where retail-like deposits and institutional withdrawals are consistent with USDC's two-tiered redemption mechanism. These patterns are invisible in aggregate data. Registry-based, transaction-level measurement thus offers a reproducible, cross-jurisdictional basis for monitoring how cryptoasset markets transmit risk.
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AI summary generated from the paper’s public abstract via arXiv; it may miss nuance — read the source before relying on it. Thank you to arXiv for its open-access interoperability; StockTools is not affiliated with arXiv, and all rights remain with the authors. Educational only, not financial advice.