BUSD Delisting Timeline · Paxos, NYDFS and Binance 2023-2024

Where BUSD sat in the stablecoin market before 2023

By early 2023, BUSD was the third-largest US-dollar stablecoin by market capitalisation. CoinGecko's snapshot for January 31, 2023 listed BUSD at approximately 16 billion in circulation, behind USDT (around 67 billion) and USDC (around 41 billion). Most of that supply lived on Binance's exchange, in BUSD trading pairs, in BUSD-denominated savings products, and in the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem where BUSD was the dominant unit of account.

The token was issued by Paxos Trust Company under a New York limited-purpose trust charter. Paxos is the same company that issues USDP (its own branded stablecoin) and that issues PayPal's PYUSD. The "Binance USD" branding was a co-marketing arrangement: Binance promoted the token on its venue, Paxos retained the legal issuance and reserve-management responsibility. Reserves were attested monthly, held mostly in US Treasury bills and short-dated repos at the time of the NYDFS order.

February 2023 · the NYDFS letter

February 13, 2023 · evening ET

The New York Department of Financial Services issues a consumer alert ordering Paxos to cease issuing new BUSD effective February 21, 2023. The order does not require Paxos to redeem outstanding tokens or to wind the product down immediately; it simply prohibits new mints from that date forward. NYDFS cites "several unresolved issues related to Paxos' oversight of its relationship with Binance" as the rationale.

February 13, 2023 · same evening

Paxos publishes a statement confirming it will halt new BUSD issuance and will continue to support redemptions through at least February 2024. Paxos states it has "no relationship" with Binance.US, that the BUSD product as issued by Paxos has only ever been a Paxos product, and that customer reserves are unaffected. The statement is technically accurate but the public reads it as a separation.

February 13, 2023 · later

The US Securities and Exchange Commission separately notifies Paxos that it intends to sue Paxos over BUSD, alleging that BUSD is an unregistered security. The SEC's claim is a separate proceeding from the NYDFS action and a different legal theory: NYDFS focused on the oversight relationship, the SEC focused on the security classification. The SEC's Wells notice was reported in the press the same week but never resulted in a filed complaint.

The combination — a state regulator halting new issuance, a federal agency signalling potential securities enforcement, and a partner-issuer publicly distancing itself — was sufficient to mark BUSD as a product without a future. Binance read the signal early.

March to June 2023 · the slow unwind on Binance

March 16, 2023

Binance announces BUSD will continue to be supported as a settlement asset, with no immediate changes to trading pairs. Privately, the exchange begins to evaluate alternative auto-conversion paths for users.

April–May 2023

BUSD market cap drops steadily. From roughly 16 billion at end-January 2023 it falls to around 5 billion by end-May. Holders rotate into USDT, USDC and Binance's emerging FDUSD partnership. The drop is not driven by panic — it is driven by the absence of fresh issuance against ongoing redemptions.

June 27, 2023

Binance announces the first round of BUSD trading-pair removals, focused on lower-volume pairs. Users with BUSD orders on those pairs are notified to cancel or migrate. BUSD remains live as a deposit / withdrawal asset.

July 11, 2023

Binance launches FDUSD trading pairs. First Digital Labs, a Hong Kong-incorporated trust company, issues FDUSD as a USD-backed stablecoin. The launch is framed as a new product, but the operational role is clear: FDUSD is to be the replacement settlement asset on Binance's exchange.

July to December 2023 · the migration runs

August 2023

Binance enables BUSD-to-FDUSD conversions at parity inside the exchange wallet, with the conversion fee subsidised. The behaviour is functionally an auto-migration option: users who do not want to redeem to fiat can swap to FDUSD in two clicks.

September 2023

More BUSD trading-pair removals announced, including several mid-volume pairs. The zero-fee promotion that Binance had been running on BUSD-quoted pairs is rolled into a new FDUSD-quoted promotion. The economic incentive to hold BUSD on the exchange disappears.

December 7, 2023

Binance announces that all remaining BUSD spot pairs will be removed on December 15, 2023. Holders of BUSD on the exchange are told that BUSD balances will be auto-converted to FDUSD on a 1:1 basis after that date, or that users can redeem through Paxos directly.

December 15, 2023

Auto-conversion of remaining BUSD balances on Binance to FDUSD executes. BUSD deposit / withdrawal continues on the exchange for accounts that opted out of auto-conversion. By end-2023, BUSD circulating supply has dropped to around 1 billion, more than 90% lower than the January 2023 peak.

January to February 2024 · the Paxos redemption window

January 12, 2024

Paxos publishes a notice giving formal advance warning that BUSD redemption support will end on February 28, 2024. The notice includes step-by-step instructions for redeeming BUSD to USD via wire transfer (for institutional accounts holding BUSD directly with Paxos) or via supported exchanges (for retail holders).

February 28, 2024

Paxos closes BUSD direct redemption. Holders who still own BUSD after this date can no longer redeem with Paxos. The token continues to exist as an ERC-20 / BEP-20 asset on chain but has no issuer-backed redemption path.

March 2024 onwards

BUSD on-chain trading continues at sub-peg prices on a handful of decentralised venues. The token trades roughly 0.90 to 0.95 in residual liquidity pools. Some forensic accounting services maintain the position for completeness, but BUSD is effectively a dead asset.

What holders actually did, in numbers

The migration pattern was visible in real time on chain. Etherscan and BscScan showed the BUSD circulating supply dropping in roughly weekly steps as Paxos processed batch redemptions and burned the corresponding tokens. The destination of redeemed funds was harder to track at the individual level but the aggregate destinations were clear from CoinGecko and DeFiLlama market-cap data over the same period.

Period	BUSD supply (approx)	USDT supply change	USDC supply change	FDUSD supply
Jan 31, 2023	16.1B	67B (baseline)	41B (baseline)	n/a
May 31, 2023	5.4B	+16B	−12B	n/a
Sep 30, 2023	2.3B	+19B	−15B	0.4B
Dec 31, 2023	0.9B	+27B	−17B	2.6B
Feb 29, 2024	0.05B	+33B	−16B	3.6B

The picture is consistent. BUSD supply moved primarily into USDT and FDUSD, not into USDC. USDC continued to lose share over the same period for unrelated reasons (the SVB depeg in March 2023, the slow return of Coinbase retail flows, the broader rotation toward Tron USDT in payment use cases). The most direct beneficiaries of the BUSD wind-down, in order, were USDT, FDUSD and TUSD.

What the BUSD wind-down taught the desk

Lesson 1 · Issuer relationship risk is real and underpriced

BUSD was reserved 1:1 with US Treasury bills. The reserves were never the problem. The wind-down was driven by a regulator's view of the oversight relationship between Paxos and Binance — a structure that Paxos itself eventually framed as an issue. Holders who only tracked reserve composition missed the actual risk. The framework risk — the relationships between issuer, exchange and regulator — is what killed the product. We extended this analysis in stablecoin reserve transparency, where the reserve-quality picture is only one of three columns.

Lesson 2 · Regulators do not need a dramatic event to act

There was no BUSD depeg. There was no reserve shortfall. There was no public scandal. The NYDFS letter cited "unresolved issues" in the oversight relationship — a soft phrase that translated, in practice, to a hard cease-and-desist. For stablecoin holders, the lesson is that supervisory tools can be deployed on framework grounds in the absence of any market event. Reserve composition is necessary but not sufficient.

Lesson 3 · Migration paths are political, not technical

Binance chose FDUSD, not USDC or DAI, as the BUSD replacement. The choice was a business decision: FDUSD's issuer (First Digital Trust) was outside the US perimeter (Hong Kong), the operational integration with Binance was deeper, and FDUSD did not carry the same Paxos / NYDFS overhang that BUSD had developed. The technical migration was trivial; the political migration was the actual decision. Holders following the auto-conversion path landed in a token with a different regulatory backstop and a different reserve attestation regime, mostly without noticing.

Practical note. If you still hold BUSD as a residual balance on a non-Binance venue, the path forward is direct: BUSD-to-USDT or BUSD-to-USDC swaps on Binance / OKX continue to execute, though at the on-chain prices that are now sub-peg. There is no path to redeem at par after February 28, 2024. The realised loss versus par is the price of not migrating during the window.

What is left of BUSD in 2026

The smart contracts continue to exist on Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain. Paxos has frozen the mint function and stopped attestations. The on-chain supply, as reported by Etherscan as of mid-2026, is in the low tens of millions and decreasing slowly as residual tokens are bridged or burned. A small DEX market continues to trade BUSD against USDT at prices roughly 0.85 to 0.92, mostly driven by holders who missed the redemption window and are taking the realised loss to free up capital.

The brand is unlikely to return. Binance's working stablecoin on its exchange is FDUSD plus a growing emphasis on USDC after the April 2024 Circle partnership. Paxos focuses on USDP and on enterprise tokenisation work. The BUSD episode is now reference material rather than a live product.

If you want to act on this

The narrow action is to check residual balances on smaller exchanges and self-custody wallets. The broader action is to apply the BUSD lesson to current holdings: ask which issuer-exchange-regulator triangle you are exposed to, and whether a single non-reserve event (a regulator action against the partner exchange, for example) could produce a similar wind-down. The desk's working venue is Binance; the working stablecoins are USDT and a smaller USDC position; the working hedge is to keep some balance off-exchange. The Binance referral link uses code BN16188 and does not change your fees.

Tracing the BUSD timeline

NYDFS Consumer Alert, "Re: Paxos Trust Company / Binance USD (BUSD)", February 13, 2023.
Paxos press release, "Paxos Will Halt Minting New BUSD Tokens", February 13, 2023.
Binance announcements, "Binance Will Cease Support for BUSD" series, June through December 2023, archived on the Binance announcements page.
Paxos redemption notice, "BUSD Redemption Closing February 28, 2024", January 12, 2024.
CoinGecko and DeFiLlama historical supply data for BUSD, USDT, USDC, FDUSD, TUSD, January 2023 through March 2024.
SEC Wells notice reports — Bloomberg, Reuters, February 13-15, 2023.

If you spot an error in the timeline above, please write to [email protected] with the line — the corrections log is on the corrections page.