A stablecoin that both its issuer and its biggest promoter walked away from three years ago still has about $233 million outstanding. BscScan counts 3,794,505 addresses holding it on BNB Chain.

The collateral behind those tokens is a different stablecoin, issued by a different company, in a different jurisdiction. That swap happened in December 2023 and the ticker never changed.

Two Tokens, One Ticker

BUSD was issued by Paxos Trust Company on Ethereum, contract 0x4Fabb145d64652a948d72533023f6E7A623C7C53, under New York State Department of Financial Services supervision. Binance-Peg BUSD is a separate token that Binance mints on other chains, most of it at 0xe9e7cea3dedca5984780bafc599bd69add087d56 on BNB Chain. Binance said so itself in a November 2022 explainer: the pegged token is "not issued by Paxos nor regulated yet by the NYDFS," and each unit was meant to "correspond to a BUSD token held in reserve by its issuer – Paxos."

Today those two numbers have inverted. DefiLlama's stablecoin index shows $34.4 million of Paxos-issued BUSD left, nearly all of it on Ethereum. Binance-Peg BUSD sits at $232.95 million spread over 27 chains. The wrapper is now about seven times the size of the token it was built to represent, which tells you the 1:1 relationship described in 2022 stopped applying somewhere along the way.

What Happened in December 2023

Paxos stopped minting new BUSD in February 2023 after NYDFS ordered it to. Binance then published a removal notice setting December 15, 2023 as the date it would cease support for BUSD products, with remaining exchange balances automatically converted to FDUSD at 1:1 starting January 2, 2024.

One line in that notice covers the on-chain tokens: "Collateral assets of Binance-Peg BUSD will also be converted to FDUSD at a 1:1 conversion rate, anticipated to take place around December 2023." Binance now locks First Digital USD and issues pegged BUSD against it on BNB Chain, Avalanche, Polygon, Tron, Optimism and the rest.

For a holder, the counterparty changed completely. The claim used to run to a New York trust company answering to a state regulator. It now runs to Binance, collateralized by a token from First Digital, a Hong Kong group whose reserves get monthly limited-assurance attestations rather than NYDFS examination.

🔍 Which BUSD Do You Have?

Paxos BUSD (ERC-20, Ethereum): issued by Paxos, $34.4 million left. Paxos says it "no longer mints new BUSD, but allows customers to redeem BUSD for USD or convert their BUSD to USDP." Needs a Paxos account and identity checks.

Binance-Peg BUSD (BEP-20 and 26 other chains): issued by Binance, $232.95 million outstanding, collateralized by locked FDUSD since December 2023. No issuer redemption desk. The unwrap route is a deposit into a Binance account.

Quick test: if the token lives anywhere other than Ethereum, it is the pegged version.

The Collateral Arithmetic

FDUSD's entire supply is $351.7 million as of August 16, 2026, down from a peak above $2.3 billion in April 2025. Of that, $242.4 million sits on Ethereum, and that figure has not moved since the start of the month.

Set it next to the $233 million of Binance-Peg BUSD outstanding and the gap is roughly $9 million. The public numbers are consistent with most of FDUSD's Ethereum supply existing to collateralize a brand that was discontinued three years ago. Two-thirds of every FDUSD in circulation sits on that one chain.

FDUSD has had its own bad week. On April 2, 2025, Tron founder Justin Sun posted that First Digital Trust was "effectively insolvent and unable to fulfill client fund redemptions." FDUSD traded as low as $0.87 intraday and closed at $0.9807 on DefiLlama's series. First Digital called the claims false, redeemed about $26 million to demonstrate liquidity, and filed a defamation claim against Sun the following week. The token recovered. Its supply never did — it has fallen 85% since.

📉 Binance-Peg BUSD vs. Paxos BUSD Supply

Source: DefiLlama stablecoin supply data, February 2024 to August 2026, in millions of dollars.

Why the Supply Stopped Moving

Binance-Peg BUSD was $384.6 million in February 2024. It drained steadily for two years and then stopped. On August 1, 2026 the figure was $232,950,995. Two weeks later it reads $232,951,036 — a change of $41 across a quarter of a billion dollars.

Distribution explains part of it. BNB Chain holds 98% of the total. The other $4.5 million is scattered across 26 chains, including $994,863 on Meter, $926,381 on Polygon, $393,156 on Moonriver and $88,410 on Astar. Binance-Peg tokens have to be deposited into a Binance account to be redeemed for the underlying asset, and the bridge that minted most of these balances is long gone. The exit needs a verified exchange account and a chain Binance still processes deposits on.

It is also one-way. Binance's notice says BUSD deposits get converted to FDUSD at 1:1 on weekdays for eligible users, and that withdrawals in BUSD are no longer supported. You can hand the token back. You cannot get it out again.

Trackers disagree on the size. DefiLlama puts circulating Binance-Peg BUSD at $233 million. BscScan's page for the BNB Chain contract showed an on-chain market cap of $283 million and 3,794,505 holders as of July 16, 2026. The two count contract balances differently. Either way it is a large float for a retired product, and 24-hour volume across every venue trading it came to $114,612.

If You Are Holding It

Most people in this position did not buy the token this year. They have a wallet from 2021 or 2022 with a BUSD balance in it and have not looked since. Four things worth doing:

  • Check the contract address, not the ticker. Both tokens display as BUSD in every wallet interface. Only the Ethereum one at 0x4Fabb145... is the Paxos token.
  • Paxos redemption covers what Paxos issued. Its stated options are cash redemption or conversion to USDP, through a Paxos account. That path does not extend to tokens Binance minted on other chains.
  • Confirm the deposit rules before sending anything. The 1:1 conversion to FDUSD comes from a notice published in 2023, and Binance reserves the right to pause it without warning. Check the current deposit page for your specific chain first.
  • Price the on-chain swap by depth, not by quote. A token clearing about $115,000 a day globally will not absorb a large order at $1.00. On the smaller chains, assume there is no market at all.

The Ticker Outlived the Product

Nothing here says the tokens are unbacked. Binance published what it did, First Digital publishes attestations, and Binance-Peg BUSD has traded within a fraction of a cent of $1.00 through the whole period — it printed $1.0028 today, slightly above the $0.9971 of the FDUSD backing it.

My read is that the disclosure problem matters more than the collateral question. A stablecoin's ticker is the only thing most holders ever check, and this one survived the retirement of its issuer and a full substitution of its collateral without changing a character. Nothing in a wallet interface flags any of it.

The habit worth building applies to every wrapped or pegged token you own, not just this one: find out what the issuer locks up today, rather than what it locked at launch. For Binance-Peg BUSD, that answer changed in December 2023, and 3.79 million addresses are still carrying the old label.