Binance removes BUSD from SAFU fund — adds TUSD, USDT

Binance will no longer hold BUSD in its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and has swapped the sta­ble­coin for ERC-20 TUSD and BEP-20 USDT, accord­ing to a March 17 press release.

The world’s largest cryp­to exchange said the swap was seam­less and will not affect users. It also pro­vid­ed the wal­let address­es where it is hold­ing the funds.

Binance said the move was nec­es­sary fol­low­ing Pax­os’ deci­sion to stop mint­ing BUSD — which will result in a grad­ual mar­ket cap reduction.

“This swap is to ensure that assets in SAFU con­tin­ue to pro­tect users in the long term as the BUSD mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion con­tin­ues to decrease over time.”

BUSD’s peg to the dol­lar was not affect­ed by the announcement.

SAFU wallets

The SAFU fund was set up in 2018 and is made up of three wal­lets that Binance shares pub­licly. The exchange pre­vi­ous­ly held Bit­coin, BNB, and BUSD in the fund.

The USDT was added to the same address the exchange uses for its BNB SAFU hold­ings. On-chain data shows the wal­let cur­rent­ly holds rough­ly $450 mil­lion worth of BNB and about $100 mil­lion in USDT.

Mean­while, the TUSD wal­let shows the exchange is hold­ing $100.3 mil­lion worth of the stablecoin.

Based on the SAFU BTC wal­let, the exchange cur­rent­ly holds 16,277 BTC in the fund — worth approx­i­mate­ly $428 mil­lion as of press time.

Paxos and BUSD

New York-based blockchain firm Pax­os was the pri­ma­ry issuer of the BUSD stablecoin.

In Feb­ru­ary, the New York Depart­ment of Finan­cial Ser­vices (NYDFS) ordered the com­pa­ny to stop issu­ing the sta­ble­coin, cit­ing over­sights in its rela­tion­ship with Binance.

The reg­u­la­tor said in a state­ment at the time:

“The Depart­ment is mon­i­tor­ing Pax­os close­ly to ver­i­fy that the com­pa­ny can facil­i­tate redemp­tions in an order­ly fash­ion sub­ject to enhanced, risk-based, com­pli­ance protocols.”

Pax­os, in turn, announced that it would adhere to the regulator’s orders and would end its rela­tion­ship with Binance.

The com­pa­ny is also report­ed­ly fac­ing reg­u­la­to­ry action from the U.S. SEC over issu­ing BUSD as an unreg­is­tered secu­ri­ty. How­ev­er, the reg­u­la­tor has not made an offi­cial move in the weeks since the NYDFS order.

If the SEC does decide to pur­sue legal action, it could imply sim­i­lar con­se­quences for oth­er stablecoins.