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Binance has converted $1 billion from its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) into Circle’s stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), effectively placing the fund to represent approximately 3% of the stablecoin’s total circulating supply.
The SAFU was established in 2018 to protect Binance users in extreme situations, such as exchange hacks, by reimbursing them for unforeseen losses. The fund was previously held in three wallets, denominated in Bitcoin, Tether, True USD, and BNB.
“We are transferring 100% of SAFU’s assets to USDC,” Binance stated, adding that the move is aimed at “making use of a trusted, audited, and transparent stablecoin,” to protect its users and enhance reliability.
According to data from Etherscan, the SAFU wallet address made a transaction of 800 million USDC on Ethereum at 02:35 UTC for a transaction fee of just $1.88. The conversion process also involved a transfer of 1.36 million BNB, worth around $754 million, and 16,277 BTC.
This is the second conversion of the SAFU in just over a year. In March 2023, Binance replaced the Binance USD (BUSD) holdings in the fund with Tether (USDT) and TrueUSD (TUSD) in response to a regulatory crackdown on BUSD issuer Paxos, which announced that it would stop minting the exchange-backed stablecoin.
With a circulating supply of $32.6 billion, USDC is the second-largest stablecoin in the market, commanding a market share of around 20%. The stablecoin’s supply has increased by 33% since December. Tether, however, remains the dominant stablecoin, with a record-high circulating supply of $108 billion and a market share of 69%.
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