Since emerging as the world's largest crypto exchange five years ago, Binance has made stablecoins—cryptocurrencies pegged to underlying assets like the U.S. dollar—a key part of its business strategy, largely through a partnership with the New York-based Paxos. Together, the two companies created a Binance-branded stablecoin called BUSD, which last November reached a market cap of more than $23 billion.
Binance has at times employed aggressive tactics to grow its share of the stablecoin market—maneuvers that generated ire among customers, competitors, and regulators. Most notably, the company announced a controversial policy in September to automatically convert customer holdings of three other major stablecoins into BUSD, a move that let Binance earn millions in additional interest from reserves that back its stablecoin.
