Binance Announces Another Major Change In Its Ecosystem Following CZ's Departure

Binance, the world's largest centralized crypto exchange platform by trading volume, announced another major change in its ecosystem days after its founder, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), stepped down as the company's chief executive officer.

In addition to Zhao's departure from the company's top position and role as chairman of the board at Binance.US, the global exchange has revealed that it will be ending support for its BUSD stablecoin starting Dec. 15.

Binance had previously made an announcement on this matter in August, stating that it would "gradually" phase out support for the stablecoin after the stablecoin issuer, Paxos, was ordered to stop minting the coin earlier this year.

"In accordance with past communications, #Binance will cease support for BUSD products starting on December 15, 2023," Binance posted on X at the time, adding, "Users may trade or convert their BUSD balances for $FDUSD at zero trading fees."

While users can still redeem their BUSD until February 2024, Binance clarified that it would halt withdrawals starting Dec. 31, 2023.

Any remaining BUSD balances would then be converted to FDUSD, another stablecoin issued by the company FD121 Ltd., Binance said in a blog post. The disabling of BUSD withdrawals is applicable to countries where Binance is available, except for users in Kazakhstan, Poland, Italy, France and Japan.

"From 2023-12-31 03:00 (UTC), BUSD withdrawals will be disabled, and any remaining BUSD balances in users' Binance accounts other than users in Japan, France, Italy, Poland and Kazakhstan will be automatically converted to FDUSD at a 1:1 conversion rate. Thereafter, users may continue depositing BUSD into Binance and can manually convert their BUSD to FDUSD at a 1:1 conversion rate until further notice," the cryptocurrency exchange said.

In February, Paxos, the financial and tech company specializing in the blockchain, was ordered by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) to stop creating more of its BUSD token.

The stablecoin issuer launched the U.S. dollar-backed BUSD with Binance in 2019 after getting approval from the NYDFS. BUSD used to be the world's third-largest stablecoin, with more than $16 billion in market capitalization, as per the latest data from CoinMarketCap.

BUSD was trading in the green zone at $1, with a 24-hour trading volume up by 1.20% at $361,156,130 as of 3:05 a.m. ET on Thursday. This price action represented a 0.2% increase in its value for the past 24 hours and a 0.1% gain over the past seven days.

Data from CoinMarketCap revealed that BUSD circulating supply stands at 1,687,415,920 BUSD while its value continues to fall by 0.02% at a $1,687,616,435 market cap.