Binance Announces Phased Transition From BUSD, Supports Conversion to New Stablecoin FDUSD

Why Do Stablecoins Depeg?

The Role of Crypto in Cross-Border Payments: The Ultimate Comparison

Coinbase Attacks Tether and Urges Users to Switch from USDT to USDC

CoinMarketCap News, Sept 6: Does the New British Prime Minister Like Cryptocurrencies?

###What is BUSD? 

Binance USD (BUSD) is a 1:1 USD-backed [stable coin](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-a-stablecoin) issued by Binance (in partnership with Paxos), Approved and regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), The BUSD Monthly Audit Report can be viewed from the official website. Launched on 5 Sep 2019, BUSD aims to meld the stability of the dollar with blockchain technology. It is a digital fiat currency, issued as ERC-20 and supports BEP-2. 

###BUSD Use Case

Based on the price stability, Stablecoin plays an important role in transactions, payments and settlement, and Decentralised Finance (DeFi). 

Here are some of the BUSD use cases: 

- Transfer your digital dollars (BUSD) anywhere in minutes, with low cost and on the blockchain.
- Trade BUSD on different exchanges and DEX.
- Deposit BUSD to earn an interest rate.
- Pay BUSD as payment for goods and services.
- Use BUSD as collateral and loan asset.
- Use BUSD as cross collateral in Futures.
- Store BUSD on an exchange or in a wallet.

### BUSD Ecosystem

The BUSD ecosystem has grown exponentially in 2021. The stablecoin grew from a market capitalization of around US$1B at the start of 2021, to over US$14.6B at the end of 2021. This makes it the third largest [stablecoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/stablecoin) by [market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/market-capitalization-market-cap-mcap), behind [Tether](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/) and [USDC](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/usd-coin/). This growth is largely due to more user adoption as wallets, platforms and services, [DEXes](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized-exchange-dex) and [CEXes](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/centralized-exchange-cex) support BUSD. 


For users interested in [yield farming](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/yield-farming) and [lending](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/peer-to-peer-p2p-lending) BUSD, it is available on centralized platforms like Binance, Blockfi and Celsius, among others. Top [DeFi](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/defi) protocols like Venus, Aave, yearn.finance and more also allow users to earn yield on their BUSD. A complete overview of the BUSD ecosystem can be found [here](https://twitter.com/binance/status/1482057448676806656/photo/1).

## Paxos Reveals Assets Backing BUSD

In light of the TerraUSD saga, a number of stablecoin issuers have moved to disclose the assets backing their coins. As of June 30, 2022, 96% of the assets backing the Binance USD were held in cash and cash equivalents, while 4% were invested in U.S. Treasury bills, Paxos revealed.

All of the company’s cash balances are held in U.S.-insured depository institutions, while the cash equivalents are held in “U.S. Treasury bills with maturities of 3 months or less, or overnight repurchase agreements, overcollateralized by U.S. Treasury instruments.”


### BUSD and Charity

In April 2022, Binance donated $2.5 million in BUSD through its charity organization to USA for UNHCR, a UN refugee agency. This was the agency’s first stablecoin crypto donation. The move demonstrated how cryptocurrency can play a key role in raising funds and supporting humanitarian aid.


###How can you buy BUSD?

You can buy BUSD from exchanges, for the latest list of exchanges and trading pairs for this cryptocurrency, click on our market pairs tab (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/binance-usd/markets). You can purchase and redeem BUSD from Paxos: (https://www.paxos.com/busd/)

BUSD is 100% backed by reserves held in either or both (i) fiat cash in dedicated omnibus accounts at insured U.S. banks and/or (ii) U.S. Treasury bills (including through repurchase agreements and/or money-market funds invested in U.S. Treasury bills). BUSD is approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). BUSD is issued by Paxos Trust Company, LLC (Paxos) in partnership with Binance and can be issued and redeemed without any extra fee. Paxos issues BUSD on the Ethereum blockchain. In addition, Binance offers a wrapped BUSD token (Binance-Peg) on BNB Chain. Please note: Binance-Peg BUSD is a Binance product; it is not issued by Paxos nor regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

BUSD

Ledger

HyperPay

Trust Wallet

MetaMask

Binance Chain Wallet

SolFlare

Backpack

Phantom

Atomic wallet

BUSD is a 1:1 USD-backed stablecoin approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and issued in partnership with Paxos.

BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2)

FTX Token

Bitcoin BEP2

WazirX

Contentos

TROY

ShareToken

Oxen

Ormeus Ecosystem

Mithril

Atlas Protocol

GoWithMi

Aeron

USDC is a stablecoin that is pegged to the U.S. dollar on a 1:1 basis. Every unit of this cryptocurrency in circulation is backed up by $1 that is held in reserve, in a mix of cash and short-term U.S. Treasury bonds. The Centre consortium, which is behind this asset, says USDC is issued by regulated financial institutions.

The stablecoin originally launched on a limited basis in September 2018. Put simply, USDC’s mantra is “digital money for the digital age” — and the stablecoin is designed for a world where cashless transactions are becoming more common.

Several use cases have been unveiled for the USDC. As well as providing a safe haven for crypto traders in times of volatility, those behind the stablecoin say it can also allow businesses to accept payments in digital assets, and shake up an array of sectors including decentralized finance and gaming.

Overall, the goal is to create an ecosystem where USDC is accepted by as many wallets, exchanges, service providers and dApps as possible.

USDC

Launched in 2014, Tether is a blockchain-enabled platform designed to facilitate the use of fiat currencies in a digital manner. Tether works to disrupt the conventional financial system via a more modern approach to money. Tether has made headway by giving customers the ability to transact with traditional currencies across the blockchain, without the inherent volatility and complexity typically associated with a digital currency. As the first blockchain-enabled platform to facilitate the digital use of traditional currencies (a familiar, stable accounting unit), Tether has democratised cross-border transactions across the blockchain.

Tether USDt

DAI is an Ethereum-based stablecoin (stable-price cryptocurrency) whose issuance and development is managed by the Maker Protocol and the MakerDAO decentralized autonomous organization.

The price of DAI is soft-pegged to the U.S. dollar and is collateralized by a mix of other cryptocurrencies that are deposited into smart-contract vaults every time new DAI is minted.

It is important to differentiate between Multi-Collateral DAI and Single-Collateral DAI (SAI), an earlier version of the token that could only be collateralized by a single cryptocurrency; SAI also doesn’t support the DAI Savings Rate, which allows users to earn savings by holding DAI tokens.

Multi-Collateral DAI was launched in November 2019.

Launched in July 2017, Binance is the biggest cryptocurrency exchange globally based on daily trading volume. Binance aims to bring cryptocurrency exchanges to the forefront of financial activity globally. The idea behind Binance’s name is to show this new paradigm in global finance — Binary Finance, or Binance.

Aside from being the largest cryptocurrency exchange globally, Binance has launched a whole ecosystem of functionalities for its users. The Binance network includes the Binance Chain, Binance Smart Chain, Binance Academy, Trust Wallet and Research projects, which all employ the powers of blockchain technology to bring new-age finance to the world. BNB is an integral part of the successful functioning of many of the Binance sub-projects.

TUSD is the first digital asset with live on-chain attestations by independent third-party institutions and is backed 1:1 with the U.S. dollar (USD). So far, it has been listed on more than 100 trading platforms such as Binance and Huobi and is live on 12 mainstream public chains, including Ethereum, TRON, Avalanche, BSC, Fantom, and Polygon.

TrueUSD is attested to in real-time by an independent, industry-specialized accounting firm in the U.S., to ensure the 1:1 ratio of its USD reserve to the circulating token supply and the 100% collateral rate. With the integration of Chainlink PoR, TrueUSD becomes the first USD-Backed stablecoin to secure minting and further ensure transparency and reliability. Users can access the relevant data via the official website tusd.io at any time. TUSD is granted statutory status as authorized digital currency and medium of exchange in the Commonwealth of Dominica, a country in the Caribbean, effective on October 7th 2022.

TrueUSD

TRON (TRX) is a decentralized blockchain-based operating system developed by the Tron Foundation and launched in 2017. Originally TRX tokens were ERC-20-based tokens deployed on Ethereum, but a year later they were moved to their own network.

Initially, the project was created with the aim of providing full ownership rights to makers of digital content. The main goal is to help content creators (who receive only a small part of the income) and encourage them with more rewards for their work. How: invite content consumers to reward content makers directly (without intermediaries like YouTube, Facebook or Apple).

The TRON software supports smart contracts, various kinds of blockchain systems, and decentralized applications aka dApps. The cryptocurrency platform uses a transaction model similar to Bitcoin (BTC), namely UTXO. Transactions take place in a public ledger, where users can track the history of operations.

Therefore, the platform was built to create a decentralized Internet and serves as a tool for developers to create dApps, acting as an alternative to Ethereum. Anyone can create dApps on the TRON network, offer content, and in return receive digital assets as compensation for their efforts. The ability to create content and share it openly without hesitation regarding transaction fees is an undeniable advantage of TRON.

TRON

Founded in September of 2018, Pax Dollar is a flat-collateralized stablecoin. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are designed to minimize the volatility of the price of the stablecoin, relative to a certain stable asset or a basket of assets.

A stablecoin can be pegged to a cryptocurrency or flat money. In some cases, it can even be traded for commodities. Pax Dollar offers the advantage of transacting with blockchain assets through minimized price risk. The Pax Dollar tokens (USDP) are issued asERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain and are collateralized 1:1 through the USD held in Paxos-owned US bank accounts.

Pax Dollar

Litecoin (LTC) is a cryptocurrency that was designed to provide fast, secure and low-cost payments by leveraging the unique properties of blockchain technology.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Litecoin.

The cryptocurrency was created based on the Bitcoin (BTC) protocol, but it differs in terms of the hashing algorithm used, hard cap, block transaction times and a few other factors. Litecoin has a block time of just 2.5 minutes and extremely low transaction fees, making it suitable for micro-transactions and point-of-sale payments.

Litecoin was released via an open-source client on GitHub on Oct. 7, 2011, and the Litecoin Network went live five days later on Oct. 13, 2011. Since then, it has exploded in both usage and acceptance among merchants and has counted among the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization for most of its existence.

The cryptocurrency was created by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee, who intended Litecoin to be a "lite version of Bitcoin," in that it features many of the same properties as Bitcoin—albeit lighter in weight.

Litecoin

Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain platform that says its goal is to allow “changemakers, innovators and visionaries” to bring about positive global change.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Cardano.

The open-source project also aims to “redistribute power from unaccountable structures to the margins to individuals” — helping to create a society that is more secure, transparent and fair.

Cardano was founded back in 2017, and named after the 16th century Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano. The native ADA token takes its name from the 19th century mathematician Ada Lovelace, widely regarded as the world’s first computer programmer. The ADA token is designed to ensure that owners can participate in the operation of the network. Because of this, those who hold the cryptocurrency have the right to vote on any proposed changes to the software.

The team behind the layered blockchain say that there have already been some compelling use cases for its technology, which aims to allow decentralized apps and smart contracts to be developed with modularity.

In August 2021, Charles Hoskinson announced the launch of the Alonzo hard fork, causing Cardano price to surge, gaining 116% in the following month. On Sept. 12, 2021, the Cardano ‘Alonzo’ hard fork officially launched, bringing smart contract functionality to the blockchain. Over 100 smart contracts were deployed in the following 24 hours after the launch.

Cardano is used by agricultural companies to track fresh produce from field to fork, while other products built on the platform allow educational credentials to be stored in a tamper-proof way, and retailers to clamp down on counterfeit goods.

Cardano

Pancakeswap was originally built on the BNB Chain and allows users to trade tokens without using a centralized exchange. It provides an array of products, such as:

An exchange to swap tokens

A yield farm to earn rewards

Syrup pools to stake CAKE tokens

Ethereum liquid staking (wBETH) and simple staking

Pancake Protectors game

v3 position manager (new feature)

A prediction market

Initial Farm Offering (IFO) token launches

A bridge to bridge CAKE to Ethereum and Aptos

A lottery

An NFT marketplace

Pancakeswap innovates quickly and ships new products regularly. In April 2023, PancakeSwap voted to transition to a deflationary token model called "Ultrasound CAKE." The protocol passed a proposal called CAKE Tokenomics v2.5 to create a structure combining real yield (no supply impact) and reduced token emissions. Over 102% of minted CAKE is burned weekly. This is intended to provide a multi-year runway for emissions and incentivize locking up CAKE, making the token more valuable long-term.

PancakeSwap has an anonymous team of “Chefs,” working in the PancakeSwap “Kitchen.” The platform is open-source and has been audited by multiple reputable blockchain security firms like Peckshield and Slowmist.

Although the bear market has impacted TVL and trading volume for the protocol, PancakeSwap still boasts an annualized revenue of $27 million, with 42% of CAKE is staked:

PancakeSwap

Polygon (previously Matic Network) is the first well-structured, easy-to-use platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. Its core component is Polygon SDK, a modular, flexible framework that supports building multiple types of applications.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Polygon Matic.

Using Polygon, one can create optimistic rollup chains, ZK rollup chains, stand alone chains or any other kind of infra required by the developer.

Polygon effectively transforms Ethereum into a full-fledged multi-chain system (aka Internet of Blockchains). This multi-chain system is akin to other ones such as Polkadot, Cosmos, Avalanche etc. with the advantages of Ethereum’s security, vibrant ecosystem and openness.

The $MATIC token will continue to exist and will play an increasingly important role, securing the system and enabling governance.

Polygon (formerly Matic Network) is a Layer 2 scaling solution backed by Binance and Coinbase. The project seeks to stimulate mass adoption of cryptocurrencies by resolving the problems of scalability on many blockchains.

Polygon combines the Plasma Framework and the proof-of-stake blockchain architecture. The Plasma framework used by Polygon as proposed by the co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, allows for the easy execution of scalable and autonomous smart contracts.

Nothing will change for the existing ecosystem built on the Plasma-POS chain. With Polygon, new features are being built around the existing proven technology to expand the ability to cater to diverse needs from the developer ecosystem. Polygon will continue to develop the core technology so that it can scale to a larger ecosystem.

Polygon boasts of up to 65,000 transactions per second on a single side chain, along with a respectable block confirmation time of less than two seconds. The framework also allows for the creation of globally available decentralized financial applications on a single foundational blockchain.

The Plasma framework gives Polygon the potential of housing an unlimited number of decentralized applications on their infrastructure without experiencing the normal drawbacks common on proof-of-work blockchains. So far, Polygon has attracted more than 50 DApps to its PoS-secured Ethereum sidechain.

MATIC, the native tokens of Polygon, is an ERC-20 token running on the Ethereum blockchain. The tokens are used for payment services on Polygon and as a settlement currency between users who operate within the Polygon ecosystem. The transaction fees on Polygon sidechains are also paid in MATIC tokens.

Polygon

Terra is a blockchain protocol that uses fiat-pegged stablecoins to power price-stable global payments systems. According to its white paper, Terra combines the price stability and wide adoption of fiat currencies with the censorship-resistance of Bitcoin (BTC) and offers fast and affordable settlements.

Development on Terra began in January 2018, and its mainnet officially launched in April 2019. As of September 2021, it offers stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar, South Korean won, Mongolian tugrik and the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights basket of currencies — and it intends to roll out additional options.

On May 28, 2022, the genesis block of the new chain was launched to conduct future transactions under the name Terra (LUNA), and the original Terra Chain was rebranded as Terra Classic. The original native token — LUNA has also been renamed as LUNA Classic (LUNC). Moreover, all network stablecoins (UST, KRT, EUT) have been renamed to Terra Classic stablecoins (USTC, KRTC, EUTC). There will be no Terra stablecoins on the new chain.

There is a theory that the additional term “classic” is a reference to the Ethereum / Ethereum Classic split in 2017. According to CEO, Do Kwon, the collapse of UST in the spring of 2022 is the equivalent moment of the Ethereum’s DAO hack that took place in 2017.

Terra Classic

Ethereum is a decentralized open-source blockchain system that features its own cryptocurrency, Ether. ETH works as a platform for numerous other cryptocurrencies, as well as for the execution of decentralized smart contracts.

Ethereum was first described in a 2013 whitepaper by Vitalik Buterin. Buterin, along with other co-founders, secured funding for the project in an online public crowd sale in the summer of 2014. The project team managed to raise $18.3 million in Bitcoin, and Ethereum’s price in the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) was $0.311, with over 60 million Ether sold. Taking Ethereum’s price now, this puts the return on investment (ROI) at an annualized rate of over 270%, essentially almost quadrupling your investment every year since the summer of 2014.

The Ethereum Foundation officially launched the blockchain on July 30, 2015, under the prototype codenamed “Frontier.” Since then, there has been several network updates — “Constantinople” on Feb. 28, 2019, “Istanbul” on Dec. 8, 2019, “Muir Glacier” on Jan. 2, 2020, “Berlin” on April 14, 2021, and most recently on Aug. 5, 2021, the “London” hard fork.

Ethereum’s own purported goal is to become a global platform for decentralized applications, allowing users from all over the world to write and run software that is resistant to censorship, downtime and fraud.

Ethereum

Dogecoin (DOGE) is based on the popular "doge" Internet meme and features a Shiba Inu on its logo. The open-source digital currency was created by Billy Markus from Portland, Oregon and Jackson Palmer from Sydney, Australia, and was forked from Litecoin in December 2013. Dogecoin's creators envisaged it as a fun, light-hearted cryptocurrency that would have greater appeal beyond the core Bitcoin audience, since it was based on a dog meme. Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted several tweets on social media that Dogecoin is his favorite coin.

Dogecoin

Polkadot is an open-source sharded multichain protocol that connects and secures a network of specialized blockchains, facilitating cross-chain transfer of any data or asset types, not just tokens, thereby allowing blockchains to be interoperable with each other. Polkadot was designed to provide a foundation for a decentralized internet of blockchains, also known as Web3.

Polkadot is known as a layer-0 metaprotocol because it underlies and describes a format for a network of layer 1 blockchains known as parachains (parallel chains). As a metaprotocol, Polkadot is also capable of autonomously and forklessly updating its own codebase via on-chain governance according to the will of its token holder community.

Polkadot provides a foundation to support a decentralized web, controlled by its users, and to simplify the creation of new applications, institutions and services.

The Polkadot protocol can connect public and private chains, permissionless networks, oracles and future technologies, allowing these independent blockchains to trustlessly share information and transactions through the Polkadot Relay Chain (explained further down).

Polkadot’s native DOT token serves three clear purposes: staking for operations and security, facilitating network governance, and bonding tokens to  connect parachains .

Polkadot has four core components:

Relay Chain: Polkadot’s “heart,” helping to create consensus, interoperability and shared security across the network of different chains;

Parachains: independent chains that can have their own tokens and be optimized for specific use cases;

Parathreads: similar to parachains but with flexible connectivity based on an economical pay-as-you-go model;

Bridges: allow parachains and parathreads to connect and communicate with external blockchains like Ethereum.

Polkadot

Launched in 2021, the XRP Ledger (XRPL) is an open-source, permissionless and decentralized technology. Benefits of the XRP Ledger include its low-cost ($0.0002 to transact), speed  (settling transactions in 3-5 seconds), scalability (1,500 transactions per second) and inherently green attributes (carbon-neutral and energy-efficient). The XRP Ledger also features the first decentralized exchange (DEX) and custom tokenization capabilities built into the protocol. Since 2012, the XRP Ledger has been operating reliably, having closed 70 million ledgers.

Uniswap is a popular decentralized trading protocol, known for its role in facilitating automated trading of decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens.

An example of an automated market maker (AMM), Uniswap launched in November 2018, but has gained considerable popularity this year thanks to the DeFi phenomenon and associated surge in token trading.

Uniswap aims to keep token trading automated and completely open to anyone who holds tokens, while improving the efficiency of trading versus that on traditional exchanges.

Uniswap creates more efficiency by solving liquidity issues with automated solutions, avoiding the problems which plagued the first decentralized exchanges.

In September 2020, Uniswap went a step further by creating and awarding its own governance token, UNI, to past users of the protocol. This added both profitability potential and the ability for users to shape its future — an attractive aspect of decentralized entities.

Uniswap

Solana is a highly functional open source project that banks on blockchain technology’s permissionless nature to provide decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions. While the idea and initial work on the project began in 2017, Solana was officially launched in March 2020 by the Solana Foundation with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Solana.

The Solana protocol is designed to facilitate decentralized app (DApp) creation. It aims to improve scalability by introducing a proof-of-history (PoH) consensus combined with the underlying proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus of the blockchain.

Because of the innovative hybrid consensus model, Solana enjoys interest from small-time traders and institutional traders alike. A significant focus for the Solana Foundation is to make decentralized finance accessible on a larger scale.

Solana

Monero was launched in 2014, and its goal is simple: to allow transactions to take place privately and with anonymity. Even though it’s commonly thought that BTC can conceal a person’s identity, it’s often easy to trace payments back to their original source because blockchains are transparent. On the other hand, XMR is designed to obscure senders and recipients alike through the use of advanced cryptography.

The team behind Monero say privacy and security are their biggest priorities, with ease of use and efficiency coming second. It aims to provide protection to all users — irrespective of how technologically competent they are.

Overall, XMR aims to allow payments to be made quickly and inexpensively without fear of censorship.

Monero

SHIB is a decentralized, community-led currency held by millions across the globe. Since its inception in late 2020, the Ethereum-based SHIB token has grown to become a worldwide phenomenon, and is now accepted as a form of payment at hundreds of locations, either directly or through third-party intermediaries.

Shiba Inu coin was created anonymously in August 2020 under the pseudonym "Ryoshi." Ryoshi says about himself that he is a nobody and not important and that the efforts to unmask his identity, even if successful, would be underwhelming.

This meme coin quickly gained speed and value as a community of investors was drawn in by the cute charm of the coin paired with headlines and tweets from personalities like Elon Musk and Vitalik Buterin.

Since release SHIB now trades on the ecosystem's proprietary DEX, ShibaSwap.