Binance SAFU Insurance coverage Fund is 44% Backed by its Personal Token

Binance’s emergency insurance coverage fund is basically comprised of a cryptocurrency tied to the corporate itself, in response to on-chain knowledge. 

The 2 addresses related to the fund present that its BNB tokens account for 44% of its reserves. 

The Incorrect Sort of Insurance coverage?

As shared by on-chain analyst Willy Woo on Twitter, the Safe Asset Fund for Customers (SAFU) consists of $367 million value of BNB. The rest is made up of Binance’s dollar-pegged stablecoin BUSD ($300 million) and Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap ($270 million). 

These balances are verifiable by public blockchain knowledge, at Binance’s Bitcoin and BSC addresses respectively. The alternate quickly plans to implement a proof of reserves system verifying its complete alternate property as nicely. 

Nonetheless, Woo discovered Binance’s reliance on BNB inside the reserve to be regarding. 

“Whereas I commend Binance for having such a fund, there’s no sense placing incidence-correlated BNB in there,” he mentioned. “How would we really feel about FTX having an insurance coverage fund crammed with FTT?”

The SAFU was created in 2018 to guard Binance customers’ funds within the occasion of a disaster. After slowly being funded by buying and selling charges collected by Binance, it formally opened in January 2022 at a valuation of $1 billion. Crypto market declines have since knocked its spot market valuation to roughly $837 million.

These funds nonetheless roughly match the $68 million in Binance’s proof of reserves as we speak, mixed with the estimated $800 million inside Binance Custody. However additional volatility, significantly in BNB, may take SAFU’s valuation far decrease when it issues most – particularly since its success is immediately associated to Binance’s stability and success. 

BNB vs FTT

BNB offers holders buying and selling charge reductions when exchanging crypto at Binance. It’s just like FTX’s FTT token on this method, however with a a lot bigger market cap. 

FTT as soon as comprised a big chunk of Alameda Analysis’s complete property, as revealed in its leaked stability sheet earlier this month. The buying and selling agency went down with its sibling alternate on November eleventh after Binance CEO Chanpeng Zhao threatened to dump the token available on the market. Its worth has since collapsed from above $22 on November sixth to beneath $2 at writing time.

The Solana Basis revealed on Monday that it held over $70 million in FTT publicity earlier this month. Its remaining tokens, which are actually value far much less, are nonetheless trapped inside FTX.