A yield token that once held $2.3 billion is closing, and the team behind the MegaETH network has cut a fifth of its staff to chase AI products. Both moves landed in the past 48 hours, as weekend crypto prices drifted lower.
MoneyTurkey Crypto Desk | 15 November 2026
Key points
- stUSDT and its wrapped version, wstUSDT, stopped paying rewards on Saturday; holders have until 23:59 UTC on 14 May 2027 to redeem for USDT on the official portal.
- stUSDT held about $8.4 million on Sunday, down 82% in a week and far below its peak of about $2.3 billion, according to DefiLlama.
- MEGA, formerly the MegaETH Foundation, cut 20% of its staff days after committing $30 million to new products led by an AI inference market due in December.
stUSDT closes its doors
The stUSDT team said on Saturday, 14 November, that stUSDT and wstUSDT “will be discontinued”, that rewards ended that day and that the redemption window runs to 14 May 2027. The token, issued on Tron and Ethereum, offered holders the yield of short-term US government debt. The notice gave no reason for the shutdown.
Nothing is paid out automatically. Holders must move tokens off exchanges or protocols such as JustLend, SunSwap and Curve to a personal wallet, unstake on the portal and then click Claim to receive USDT. Requests after the May deadline go to customer support and are paid in monthly batches through August 2027, the redemption guide says. The team warned that exchanges, wallets and DeFi protocols will gradually stop supporting both tokens.
JustLend, the Tron lending protocol, said it will switch off new supply and borrowing in its wstUSDT market and later adjust that market’s parameters, with existing positions still manageable during the transition. A governance proposal says those parameter changes are expected to be put forward around late November.
Deposits on stUSDT stood at about $8.4 million on Sunday, down 82% over seven days, according to DefiLlama. At its height the token held about $2.3 billion, so the unwind now touches a small fraction of the money it once managed.
MEGA trims staff for an AI pivot
Co-founder Shuyao Kong said on X on Friday that MEGA had reorganized its teams, “a process that has resulted in a 20% reduction in our staff”. The cuts hit people working on the blockchain, wallet, ecosystem support and communications; the founders, early employees and core engineering team are staying. Kong did not say how many jobs went.
The foundation rebranded as MEGA on 10 November and committed $30 million from its treasury to products on MegaETH, starting with a public AI inference market planned for December, according to The Block and crypto.news. “We realized that staying a chain-only company felt wrong,” Kong wrote earlier in the week, CoinDesk reported. Kong did not directly link the layoffs to the new strategy, Cointelegraph noted.
Activity on the network has thinned. DeFi deposits on MegaETH were about $8.8 million on Sunday, down from a peak above $240 million, according to DefiLlama data cited by CoinDesk and DefiLlama’s own chain page.
Market backdrop
Bitcoin was at about $64,600 on Sunday afternoon, down 1.5% over 24 hours, and Ether was near $1,806, also down 1.5%, according to CoinGecko. Tron’s token, which pays network fees on the chain where stUSDT launched, fell 1.8% to about $0.304.
What to watch
- Dates for JustLend’s wstUSDT parameter changes, expected to be proposed around late November
- Which exchanges and wallets drop stUSDT and wstUSDT, and when
- The launch of MEGA’s AI inference market in December
Related on MoneyTurkey
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- Crypto movers: XRP Below $1, Ether Under $1,800
For information only. Not investment advice.
Sources
- Coindaro: https://www.coindaro.com/stusdt-shutdown-redemption-deadline/
- JustLend: https://support.justlend.org/hc/en-us/articles/64317608116249-Announcement-on-the-Orderly-Offboarding-of-the-wstUSDT-Market
- JUST forum: https://forum.just.network/t/proposal-orderly-offboard-the-stusdt-market/881
- DefiLlama (stUSDT): https://defillama.com/protocol/stusdt
- Cointelegraph: https://cointelegraph.com/news/megaeth-parent-cuts-20-percent-staff-ai-push
- The Block: https://www.theblock.co/news/business/2026-11-13-megaeth-mega-layoffs-20-percent-restructuring-440206
- crypto.news: https://crypto.news/mega-cuts-20-percent-staff-ai-restructuring/
- CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/11/14/ethereum-scaling-project-megaeth-slashes-staff-by-20-as-it-pursues-ai-business
- DefiLlama (MegaETH): https://defillama.com/chain/megaeth
