Following the recent shutdown of the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken’s staking service, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) ordered Paxos Trust Co. to stop creating more of its Binance USD token, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The token, also known as BUSD, is a stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar on a one-to-one basis. The state’s order was due to “a result of several unresolved issues related to Paxos’ oversight of its relationship with Binance in regard to Paxos-issued BUSD.”
Paxos failed to conduct periodic risk assessments and due diligence of Binance and customers holding BUSD issued by Paxos, a source told the Journal.
In a statement, Paxos said that it will stop issuing new BUSD on Feb. 21 and that “[n]ew and existing Paxos customers will be able to redeem their funds in U.S. dollars or convert their BUSD tokens to Pax Dollar (USDP), a regulated U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin also issued by Paxos Trust.”
Binance and Paxos partnered to launch BUSD in 2019. Paxos said the stablecoin was approved by the DFS, the Journal reported. There were 6.2 million holders of BUSD as of Feb. 13, according to Binance’s website. It is the third-largest stablecoin by market cap, but that is expected to drop as a result of Paxos’s ceasing to issue it.