A few days ago I came across a comment saying this:
In case you can't read the image, it says:
Really weird... I got also a notification that they will change BUSD for FDUSD.
and it refers to Binance. The comment came on a post of .
I knew they were going to stop support for BUSD at the same time as Paxos, the issuer of BUSD from New York, due to the actions of SEC. That will happen by February 2024.
I also knew they said they will replace BUSD with a different stablecoin because they said that months ago. But the exact details of which stablecoin that will be was news to me.
So I searched to see details about FDUSD (First Digital USD).
Like most stablecoins, it is reserve-backed. Its 1:1 audited reserves, according to this article on Binance Academy, will be "held in cash and highly liquid assets".
FDUSD will continue to be pegged to USD like BUSD, as the name suggests. That means they gave up to the relatively silly idea (in this current economic context) to peg it to a different fiat currency or a basket of them.
The major difference, in my opinion, is where the issuer of the new stablecoin is located. Instead of a New York-based company, FDUSD will be issued by a subsidiary of a Hong Kong-headquartered company. The SEC has done its job, and officially pushed Binance to the other side of the world. Unofficially, maybe they were already there...
Binance already started to roll out products for the new stablecoin. For now (as of mid-August), they activated it on the P2P platform of Binance. It's also listed as a coin on the exchange, obviously, and it appears Binance is progressively incentivizing users to exchange their BUSD to FDUSD.
The transition from BUSD to FDUSD is ongoing. We might not want to wait for February 2024 to do something about our BUSD or BUSD-based services/products, if we have any...