The Binance USD (BUSD) market cap is down nearly $14 billion since its all-time high of $23.49 billion on November 15, 2022. That drop means the market cap is now back for the first time in two years. below $10 billion. That drop is all a result of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) crackdown.
SEC tough crackdown
You must have noticed that the SEC has gone to Paxos to tell the American company that they are no longer allowed to issue new BUSD. This happened on February 13 and since then the currency has started a deadly fall. In this way, it will not be long before the stablecoin has completely disappeared from the scene.
Incidentally, Paxos is the publishers and manager of the stablecoin, which in principle only has the Binance brand stuck on it. Binance has sold Paxos the license to market a stablecoin on behalf of their brand name.
In that respect, Binance will not be very affected by this, except that it is also about their brand. Many people will not know that the stablecoin is actually one of Paxos and that only the brand name Binance is stuck on the coin.
Coinbase discontinues BUSD
Earlier this week, major Coinbase also announced that it would end support for BUSD following the SEC’s action. As of March 13, it is no longer possible to trade BUSD on Coinbase. If you still have BUSD in your account after that date, you can withdraw it and sell it on another exchange platform.
After the launch of the Binance stablecoin in September 2019, the coin quickly rose to the top of the industry. After Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), BUSD was the largest. At the time of writing, BUSD is still at number 11 on CoinMarketCap, but that too will not last long this way.
It is also striking that Changpeng Zhao op February 14 in a Twitter Spaces shared – just after the SEC announced the penalty – that he never had much faith in the stablecoin project. At first he even expected it to fail.