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Comment by kikokikokiko | Hacker News Reader

So, they need to find gullible 3rd parties that accept to give them hard cash (USD) in exchange for their in house created clown money (BUSD), and then use this hard cash to go to the market and buy USDC. How is this different from FTX padding their balance sheet with billions of their own made up clown money? Crypto is ponzies all the way down.

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BUSD is not clown money or created by Binance. It is the most highly regulated financial instrument in crypto, issued by Paxos New York, tightly regulated by NYDFS, backed 1:1 and regularly audited.

https://paxos.com/busd/

So, it's just like the deposits on FTX, or the reserves of Tether right?

Yes, on a centralized entity you're required to trust ("we're totally backed by cash and bonds, for realsies"), as opposed to owning and holding your crypto outright.

From their web page:

> Transparent

> A top auditing firm will attest to the matching supply of BUSD tokens and underlying U.S. dollars on a monthly basis.

Note the future tense, as in, "sometime indefinitely away in the future".

Their attestations (as opposed to audits) just say that at a certain instant in time they had the required amount in a bank account. That means Paxos could have borrowed it for a short while. Quote [1]: "Any activity prior to or after the Report Dates and Times at 5:00 pm ET was not considered when testing the assertions described above."

This is the same trick pointed out by Coffeezilla about a year ago, about Tether. [2]

And the one from November is missing.

[1] - https://paxos.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Executed-BUSD-E...

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-whuXHSL1Pg

Yes this is the issue with attestations. They tell people how much you hold without telling them how much you owe.

For all anyone knows the assets held could be collateral for a large overdue loan.

FTX international was not regulated and Tether is debt backed. So no it's not like either of those things.

Binance is regulated where exactly? Can you please point me to the jurisdiction where it's offices are located, so I can instruct my lawyers to send them some papers? Just asking in case something happens in the future.

BUSD is not a Binance product, it is a Paxos product [0] regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Binance merely pays to have their name on it.

[1] Here is the specific NYDFS guidance on Paxos' issuance of stablecoins. [2] And here is a link to their NYDFS appointed third-party auditory accounting firm.

Complaints against Paxos can be filed with the New York State Department of Financial Services at:

One State Street

New York, NY 10004

---

OR with Paxos directly at

450 Lexington Ave

Suite 3952

New York, NY 10163

---

[0] https://paxos.com/busd/

[1] https://www.dfs.ny.gov/industry_guidance/industry_letters/il...

[2] https://www.withum.com/

So in an eventual future where BINANCE stops allowing people to withdraw their BUSD, I can go to Paxos door and complain about it? Will my clown USD be returned to me?

Let me add:

Only BUSD on Ethereum (ERC-20) is issued by Paxos. The BUSD on the BNB Chain (BEP-20) is not affiliated with Paxos and not regulated by NYDFS. Quoting Paxos:

"BUSD is issued by Paxos on the Ethereum blockchain and regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services. Separately, Binance wraps BUSD and issues separate tokens (known as Binance-Peg BUSD) on several blockchains, including BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, and Avalanche. These tokens are unaffiliated with Paxos and not regulated by the NYDFS."

Yes, but I believe that this "wrapping" should be visible on chain. In the sense that there should be a 1:1 mapping between "real" BUSD locked on Ethereum and the number of pegged BUSD on other chains, and that the accounting can be verified in real time. But I haven't verified.

> But I haven't verified.

Offhand, I can't think of a fast and easy way to verify this reliably.

I visited Binance's main page on BUSD [1] and it suggests you go look at their proof-of-reserves page [2], which lists the exact number of each token on Ethereum (5,334,500,000), BNB (5,315,999,056), Avalanche (11,500,000) and Polygon (6,000,000), each with links to block explorers. Note that if everything adds up, this total leaves 1,000,944 tokens on Ethereum, but at least that's positive.

Edit: I spent some time thinking the Ethereum number was the total number of BUSD, but apparently it is Binance's holdings which can be found in a wallet nicknamed "Binance: Binance-Peg Tokens" on Etherscan [3]. Since this number is greater than the total number of pegged tokens, I guess everything adds up. (Of course, since the "cross-chain peg" here is implemented in a centralized way by Binance, it could de-peg at any point they want it to.)

[1] https://www.binance.com/en/blog/ecosystem/understanding-busd... [2] https://www.binance.com/en/collateral-btokens [3] https://etherscan.io/address/0x47ac0fb4f2d84898e4d9e7b4dab3c...

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