Further Binance-Peg Token Problems

In previous work we established that the Binance-Peg tokens have had management issues for quite some time. Bloomberg News got Binance to confirm the analysis was correct. Bloomberg quotes a Binance spokesperson as saying:

Here we are going to look into 3 major stablecoins (USDC, USDT and TUSD) in their Binance-Peg form. And then we are going to survey a range of other assets which, to this day, exhibit troubling patterns.

Analysis of Binance-Peg USDC is straightforward. If we compare the balance in the ETH Binance-Peg wallet against the market cap we get:

The run up in early 2021 resembles BUSD: tokens are printed on Binance Smart Chain well before they are deposited into the peg address. But, eventually, the balance catches up.

And then in late 2022 something new happens. In this transaction on 17-Aug-2022 Binance entirely drained the peg wallet, transfering out $1.779 billion. Over the next few months $1 billion Binance-Peg USDC were burned. And then, in this transaction on 6-Dec-2022 about $883 million are sent back in, matching the then-current market cap.

Someone received a loan of something like $1B for about 100 days. It is not clearly exactly what happened…but this is very large, very obviously manual and very recent.

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