Established by Binance in 2018 as an emergency insurance reserve for its users, the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) is designed to reimburse traders in the event of the exchange losing investor assets, such as in cases of hacking.
The fund aims to maintain a value of over $1 billion under normal circumstances. Prior to this conversion, SAFU held both Bitcoin BTC and BNB. According to CoinGecko data, both assets declined by 12.6% and 9.1% respectively over the past seven days. Therefore, to avoid further price volatility, the cryptocurrency exchange has decided to convert all of the fund's assets to USDC to enhance “reliability and stability.”
“SAFU is an emergency insurance fund established in 2018 to protect Binance users in extreme cases,” Binance wrote in a blog post. “Over the years, we have been monitoring the size of SAFU to ensure that the balance is sufficient to safeguard our users.”
In this conversion, approximately $1 billion worth of Bitcoin was transferred out of SAFU's Bitcoin wallet address, and slightly over $740 million worth of BNB was transferred out of its BSC wallet address. Using a blockchain explorer to track, both amounts eventually entered Binance's hot wallet address. Now, SAFU only holds 1 billion USDC on the Ethereum network.
Crypto observers on Twitter speculate that Binance's move is more about taking profits rather than reacting to poor performance in asset prices, which might have caused its size to drop below $1 billion. This is because, despite recent declines in Bitcoin and Binance Coin, their prices are still significantly higher than at the beginning of the year. At this stage, converting the main portion of the insurance fund, which was previously predominantly in cryptocurrencies, to USDC can be seen as locking in profits and taking a profit exit.
Switching assets to stablecoins is a common strategy to enhance the stability of a fund, as stablecoins can maintain a stable value pegged to a fiat currency. It's worth noting that Binance chose Circle's USDC instead of USDT, which has the largest market capitalization, with a market value $76 billion higher than USDC.
In its blog post, Binance emphasized the rationale behind this decision, stating that USDC is a “trusted, audited, and transparent stablecoin.” Meanwhile, Tether (USDT) has been the subject of controversy, with critics claiming that the stablecoin is not actually backed by real U.S. dollars, causing it to occasionally lose its peg to the dollar.
