• Binance has decided to convert its $1 billion in its Industry Recovery Initiative from BUSD to BTC, ETH, and BNB.
• The crypto market reacts with Bitcoin up by 10 percent in the last 24 hours.

In November 2022, Binance announced the establishment of an Industry Recovery Initiative (IRI) meant to support distressed crypto firms. An amount of $1 billion worth of BUSD was committed to this course. According to the exchange, it is committed to ramping up this amount to $2 billion in the near future depending on the need. 

We anticipate this initiative will last about six months and will be flexible on the investment structure — token, fiat, equity, convertible instruments, debt, credit lines, etc.

Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of the exchange has recently announced that the fund would be converted from BUSD to Bitcoin [BTC], Ethereum [ETH], and Binance Coin [BNB].

Given the changes in stable coins and banks, #Binance will convert the remaining of the $1 billion Industry Recovery Initiative funds from BUSD to native crypto, including #BTC, #BNB and ETH. Some fund movements will occur on-chain. Transparency.

BUSD under huge regulatory scrutiny

BUSD is a stablecoin issued by blockchain company Paxos. Just recently, Coinbase announced that it would delist BUSD from its exchange because it no longer meets its listing standard. Paxos was ordered by the New York District of Financial Services to stop minting and issuing new BUSD. Paxos then announced in a statement that it would stop issuing the stablecoin on February 21. They, however, clarified that the one in circulation is backed one-to-one with the US Dollar reserved. The firm also disclosed that it would end its relationship with Binance. According to the NYDFS, its decision was due to several unresolved issues related to the firm’s oversight of its relationship with Binance.

The department is monitoring Paxos closely to verify that the company can facilitate redemptions in an orderly fashion subject to enhanced, risk-based, compliance protocols.

Some companies affected by FTX failure

The decision to convert the Industry Recovery Fund from BUSD is to enable Binance to continue to render support to companies heavily affected by the FTX drama. It can be recalled that the crypto lending arm of U.S. digital asset broker Genesis Trading suspended customers’ redemption citing FTX failure. The company disclosed that its derivative business has approximately $175 million in locked funds on FTX. 

Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network also stated that it has 3.5 million Serum tokens (SRM) on FTX and another $13 million in loans to FTX-linked trading company Alameda Research.

Another company affected by the FTX collapse was GOPAX, one of the top five cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea. In November last year, it suspended principal and interest payments on its Decentralized Finance service (GoFi). 

GOPAX became the first beneficiary of Binance’s IRI investment. This was announced on February 3. 

As of February, the IRI was backed by 18 organizations that had jointly committed $1.1 billion. Around that time, 14 projects had been funded with another 57 projects in due diligence. The likes of “Animoca Brands, Aptos Labs, Brooker Group, DWF Labs, GSR, Jump Crypto, Kronos, and Polygon Ventures” have all pledged money to the IRI according to Binance. 

Following the IRI fund conversion announcement, the crypto market has recorded some interesting runs with Bitcoin and Ethereum up by 10 percent in the last 24 hours. BNB is also up by 9 percent with ADA surging by 11 percent in the last 24 hours. 

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