In June 2023, with the issuance of TUSD (TrueUSD) again, its issuance has exceeded 3 billion, and its market value is close to BUSD, becoming the fifth largest stablecoin. In 2023, the issuance of TUSD increased by more than 200%. It can be said that it is the only stablecoin whose issuance has grown rapidly during the cryptocurrency bear market. Combing the development history of TUSD: Re-understanding this new Binance upstart Due to different coordinate systems, the chart only represents the trend. Data source: glassnode It seems that everyone in the industry knows that the reason why TUSD flourished in the bear market is inseparable from the promotion of Binance. Looking back on the development history of TUSD, we can find that TUSD, which seems to be "getting up early and catching up late", has a different experience from most other centralized stablecoins, including the mysterious departure of TrustToken co-founder and CEO and the change of ownership of the company, as well as the original team's unsecured lending agreement TrueFi and issuing coins, etc. It seems that TUSD is a foregone conclusion as Binance's new "royal" stablecoin. But why did Binance choose TUSD, and who is the actual controller and beneficiary of TUSD now? How will Binance prevent TUSD from becoming the next BUSD? With these questions, we have conducted a detailed review of the history of TUSD and restored the entire development history of TUSD through clues. Who is Techteryx? The secret of TUSD Looking back on the six years from 2018 to 2023, after experiencing the initial glory, the mid-term malaise, the subsequent change of ownership and drifting with the tide, TUSD has become what it is today. Born with a golden key Although it has a weak presence in DeFi Summer, TUSD (TrueUSD) issued by TrustToken is actually earlier than USDC (USD Coin), USDP (Pax Dollar) and BUSD. According to the official website, TUSD was launched in April 2018 and is the first US dollar stablecoin operated by a regulated operator. When TrustToken was founded in 2018, it received a total of $20 million in investment, including a16z and Founders Fund, which have experienced both bull and bear markets, GGV Capital, a well-known Chinese institution, and now well-known market makers Jump Trading Capital and BlockTower Capital, as well as Danhua Capital and ZhenFund, which were very popular in the cryptocurrency circle at the time. As early as the year of its launch, its issuance volume exceeded $200 million.However, in January 2020, the issuance volume dropped to about $150 million, surpassed by USDC's $500 million and USDP's $200 million. Although it was born with a golden key, it quickly landed on many mainstream trading platforms such as Binance, Bittrex, and Upbit once it was issued. However, judging from the issuance volume, the number of trading pairs, and the trading volume, TUSD was not successful in its early years. Mysterious change of ownership According to Linkedin data, Jai An, co-founder and CEO of TrustToken, the TUSD issuing company, resigned in July 2020. He was almost "offline" and never updated his information. Since then, it has been difficult to find information about the former CEO of TUSD on various online platforms. Coincidentally, starting in July 2020, TUSD, which had not been issued for a long time, began to be intensively issued from this time, and soon the issuance volume exceeded the previous highest value, reaching $500 million. Combing the history of TUSD development: Re-understanding this new Binance upstart Data source: glassnode TrustToken officially announced in December 2020 that the ownership of TUSD will be transferred to the Asian consortium Techteryx. TUSD will have financial and operational resources independent of TrustToken Inc. The TrustToken team will continue to manage the operation, compliance and banking relationships of the product. TUSD will continue to exist on the Ethereum blockchain and support the Binance blockchain, and will soon be natively introduced to Tron and other chains. This means that at the public level, the formal handover has been completed. Another co-founder and CTO Rafael Cosman became the CEO of TrustToken in the announcement and continued until the Archblock period. At the same time, the official Medium of TUSD was transferred to a new account, and all the articles previously published by TUSD were retained in the TrueFi account, which is why clicking on some early announcements now jumps to the TrueFi page. It should be from this time that the matter of who this Asian consortium Techteryx is and who the real owner of TUSD is has become confusing. After TUSD announced the change of ownership, it triggered a heated discussion in the Makerdao community about the risks of TUSD, where we got "very detailed invalid information" from the official. Techteryx is a large joint venture located in Hong Kong, Singapore, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Beijing, led by Jennifer Jiang (the largest owner), who has a deep background in traditional industries and has led the acquisition of more than a dozen companies...... This answer is easy to make people confused. In the process of further questioning, community members said that no information about Techteryx was found in the above-mentioned areas. The only content that can be found about Jennifer Jiang is that she is the CEO of a blockchain company in Boston and has published a paper on the blockchain consensus mechanism. However, the TUSD official who released the above information did not answer this. Interestingly, for many players, the question of who is the owner behind TUSD has become an "open secret" in the currency circle. The reason why it is open is that although Techteryx and the people who give orders behind it are good at hiding themselves, large-scale on-chain data cannot deceive people. Observing from the current on-chain data, the answer seems to be more obvious. 1) Not only in the DeFi Summer period, most of the use cases of TUSD come from Tron. According to official data, the issuance of TUSD on the Tron chain is about 2.37 billion US dollars, accounting for about 76% of the total issuance, and the issuance on the Ethereum chain is about 730 million US dollars, accounting for about 23% of the total. Combing the history of TUSD development: reacquainting this Binance upstart As of June 2023, the main circulation data displayed on the TUSD official website 2) Not only that, when ZachXBT publicly accepted fundraising due to Huang Licheng's lawsuit, only 3 users donated TUSD, and Justin Sun was not only the first among them, but also the user with the largest donation amount among the 3. Combing the history of TUSD development: reacquainting this Binance upstart Justin Sun's address donated 10,000 TUSD, source: DeBank 3) Combined with the fact that Justin Sun transferred more than 56 million TUSD to Binance during the LaunchPool of Binance SUI, he was warned by CZ. Combing the history of TUSD development: reacquainting this Binance upstart Combining the above clues, whether explicit or implicit, we seem to be able to find some answers to the question of the actual owner of TUSD. And why is this called a secret? First of all, TUSD has always belonged to Techteryx in name, and Ms. Jennifer Jiang did not come forward in the public media to explain the matter. Nor has any Techteryx-related staff publicly stated that TUSD is related to Sun. Not only that, Adam Cochran (@adamscochran) once summarized the actual situation about TUSD, "Justin Sun's business group purchased TrueUSD, but still pays management fees to the original American owner.Then it was transferred to an offshore bank, and now as the market value grows, the control of the private key has also been transferred, but there is no real evidence to support it..." Adam is like the little boy in the emperor's new clothes, saying what many people want to say. However, the subsequent development of the situation is very different from the fairy tale. He received a warning from the TUSD official: 1) TrueUSD has never belonged to Justin Sun; 2) We reserve the right to seek legal remedies for your defamation. The official "rumor-busting" and lawyer's letter warning further cleared the relationship between Justin Sun and TUSD in the public eye and at the legal level. Let the ownership of TUSD continue to be a "secret that cannot be told." In response to the tweet about "but they just don't admit it", Adma said that in fact, when taking over a business worth more than $1 billion, most legitimate business groups want the public to know who they are-not to hide it. Crypto has always been the Wild West. Under the influence of various internal and external factors, it is also common for many Chinese companies to adopt offshore companies, "white gloves" and outsourcing companies. Just like, Justin Sun is only a Huobi consultant now. TUSD and TrueFi, brothers of the same origin but different attributes In fact, CZ has clarified the fact that TrueFi has nothing to do with TUSD. But by clarifying the timeline of the development of events related to TrueFi, we can better understand the relationship between the original TUSD team, investors and acquirer Techteryx: In 2018, TrustToken received a total of US$20 million in investment from institutions such as a16z, BlockTower and Jump; In July 2020, TrustToken was suspected of having a transaction of ownership transfer, and the original CEO resigned; On November 6 of the same year, TrustToken launched the first unsecured lending agreement TrueFi, and the platform's main loan use case was TUSD; In December, TrustToken officially announced the transfer of TUSD ownership. In August 2021, TrustToekn announced that it had completed a US$12.5 million financing by selling TrueFi's native token TRU, led by Blocktower, and participated by a16z and Alameda Research. In March 2022, TrustToken added two new senior executives, Wall Street veteran Bill Wolf and senior product manager Ryan Christensen, who served as chief investment officer and chief product officer respectively;In September of the same year, TrustToken was renamed Archblock, and Ryan Christensen, who had joined previously, was promoted to CEO. Former CEO Rafael Cosman served as a board member and consultant, and founded AI company Protogon Research in 2023. Combined with the above timeline, we can clearly see that TUSD and TrueFi have been of the same origin but different attributes from the beginning. From the TrustToekn team selling TUSD ownership, to the creation of TureFi based on TUSD and financing and issuing coins, to the establishment of a new company, and even the introduction of executives with good backgrounds for the founder's exit. A series of hidden and delicate chain operations are amazing. Without careful combing, it is difficult to distinguish the relationship between the two parties. This is probably the reason why every TUSD issuance has caused a surge in TrueFi token TRU. Indifferent and ambiguous, why did Binance choose TUSD? Binance is an early trading platform that supports TUSD. It planned to launch TUSD in May 2018 and launched its trading pairs with BTC, ETH and BNB. But perhaps because of liquidity, Binance finally delayed the launch of TUSD by 4 days. Subsequently, for most of 2019, Binance gradually launched some TUSD trading pairs for projects with large market capitalization and good liquidity. But at this time, Binance may still be in the stage of looking for a reliable stablecoin direction. The stablecoins launched are not only TUSD, but also USDC and PAX. Although the announcement content mentions a lot, TUSD is not unique among many stablecoins. In order to fully understand the changes in the relationship between Binance and TUSD in detail, we collected the English announcements related to TUSD released by Binance. Combing the development history of TUSD: Re-understanding this Binance upstart TUSD's "good days" on Binance temporarily ended in October 2019. Since then, Binance has almost no new TUSD trading pairs. From April to October 2020, for 7 months, TUSD only had announcements of being removed from trading pairs on Binance. In the following time, TUSD became the least visible one among Binance’s stablecoins. Until 2022, Binance continued to remove TUSD trading pairs. In contrast to the continuous decline of TUSD, Binance and crypto financial institution Paxos Trust Co. jointly launched the US dollar-backed stablecoin Binance USD, or BUSD, in September 2019.Turnaround The circulation of BUSD exceeded TUSD in early 2020, and in September, it surpassed PAX's USDP with the help of BSC (now BNB Chain), and has been far ahead ever since. At its peak, Binance followed FTX's strategy and automatically converted USDC, USDP, and TUSD to BUSD, realizing the unification of compliant stablecoins on Binance. It can be said that at that time, everyone only knew USDT, USDC, and BUSD as centralized stablecoins. Combing the development history of TUSD: Re-understanding this new Binance upstart Since September 2020, the market share of BUSD represented by blue has increased rapidly. Data source: Coin Metrics But on February 13, 2023, the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) ordered Paxos to stop issuing more BUSD. The fate of TUSD has ushered in a turnaround. NYDFS emphasized that it authorized Paxos to issue BUSD on the Ethereum blockchain, but the department has not yet authorized Binance-Peg BUSD on any blockchain. Paxos responded that starting from February 21, Paxos will stop issuing new BUSD tokens in accordance with the instructions of NYDFS and in close cooperation with it. BUSD will continue to be fully supported by Paxos and can be redeemed until at least February 2024. Subsequently, BUSD, which once had a market value of $22 billion, gradually withdrew from the stage of history. At that time, few people would have thought that Binance would choose TUSD. Because at that time, the market value of USDT was $69 billion, the market value of USDC was $41 billion, and MakerDAO's DAI also had $5 billion. The market value of TUSD was only $900 million, even less than the $1 billion of Frax Finance's native stablecoin FRAX. But the small issuance volume seems to be the best problem to solve here at Binance. Since September 2019, TUSD has been "put into the cold palace" by Binance. In the five months from September 2022 to March 2023, TUSD even completely disappeared from Binance's announcements. In five years, Binance has only issued 62 announcements for TUSD. From March to June 2023, Binance issued 41 announcements related to TUSD in three months. It was also from then on that the circulating market value of TUSD increased by 220%. What did Binance do after choosing TUSD? In order to safeguard its own rights and interests and the interests of BUSD holders, Binance first chose to add stablecoin spot trading pairs on March 11, launched rate discounts and stopped the automatic conversion of stablecoins. At the same time, BNB, ETH and TUSD trading pairs were free of handling fees.One detail in the announcement is that the window for BUSD to be automatically converted to TUSD at a 1:1 ratio is nearly 2 weeks longer than that of USDC and USDP, and the closeness of the relationship is self-evident. In addition, Binance will add TUSD trading pairs to popular trading currencies and enable margin-by-position for some TUSD trading pairs. Take RDNT, which was launched on Binance Innovation Zone on March 31, as an example. The three trading pairs are BTC, USDT and TUSD. If the above strategy is just an appetizer, then the launch of TUSD Pool by Launchpool and the BTC/TUSD trading pair with no handling fee can be said to be the feast prepared by Binance for TUSD. It should be noted that the regular customers of Launchpool before were only BNB and BUSD, and since March, all Launchpools of Binance have only BNB and TUSD. It can be seen that TUSD has a high status in Binance. Binance announced on March 15 that it would stop the zero-fee activity for BTC in various trading pairs, and only BTC/TUSD will enjoy the 0-fee activity for maker and taker orders. This strong stimulus has made the BTC/TUSD trading pair surpass the BTC/USDT trading pair and become the trading pair with the largest trading volume on Binance. TUSD's hidden worries Although Binance supports TUSD like BUSD, the foundation of TUSD, which has been running all the way, is still slightly unstable. When TUSD is not supported by Binance Launchpool, its exchange rate against USDT has been negative for a long time. Not only that, it is often in a de-anchored state in the Curve pool, accounting for nearly 70% of the 3 Pool and TUSD liquidity pools. Combing the history of TUSD development: Re-understanding this Binance upstart TUSD's share in Curve 3 Pool/TUSD liquidity pool is seriously tilted. Except for Tron and Ethereum chains, the issuance of TUSD is very small. In addition to its previous use on TruFi and USDD, TUSD, which had few use cases during the DeFi Summer, is now even more stretched. Although Binance has launched a zero-order fee campaign for TUSD, the trading volume of other trading pairs except BTC is dismal. Even when ETH/TUSD has free orders, the trading volume is far less than that of the USDT trading pair. And trading platforms other than Binance have even fewer strong support for the TUSD trading pair. OKX does not have a TUSD trading pair, and Huobi has only launched two trading pairs, USDT and USDD. Not only are there few use cases, but the more than 3 billion US dollar reserves of TUSD also seem to be a big problem in the community.TUSD has always claimed that Chainlink provides proof of reserves for TUSD, but Chainlink's display data is obtained from a company called The Network Firm, which regularly reviews TrustToken's custodial bank accounts. It is worth noting that some members of The Network Firm come from Armanino, which audited FTX in 2020 and 2021, and TUSD's proof of reserves was also audited by Armanino. Not only is the reserve data proof, Prime Trust, the custodian that holds reserves for TUSD, is also deeply troubled by the bankruptcy crisis. On June 28, the Nevada Financial Institutions Department (FID) filed a petition with the Eighth Judicial District Court of Nevada, requesting the appointment of a receiver to take over the daily operations of Prime Trust, a cryptocurrency custodian, and to examine all its financial conditions. FID's documents show that Prime Trust lost access to old wallets as early as 2021 and used customers' assets to repurchase cryptocurrencies. Even TUSD officials have repeatedly stated through different channels that they will suspend minting through Prime Trust. Why TUSD? Even though there are many hidden dangers, why did Binance still choose TUSD? The regulatory issue is an inevitable link. By reviewing the development history of BUSD, perhaps we can find some clues. Binance chose to cooperate with Paxos in September 2019. The experienced Paxos played the role of the issuing entity of BUSD on Ethereum. BUSD is its ERC-20 Token issued on Ethereum, and the BUSD reserve is stored in Paxos's US bank account. But BSC (now BNB Chian) is the success and failure of BSC. This is also one of the reasons why BUSD was accused of regulation. Paxos issued BUSD with the authorization of NYDFS, but it was limited to Ethereum. BUSD issued on the BSC chain is a completely different matter. Although Binance's cooperation with Paxos is well known because of BUSD, Binance announced a partnership with TrustToken as early as June of the same year. Jai An, who was still CEO at the time, said that Binance users can mint and redeem TUSD seamlessly. We will work with Binance to make it easier for users to enter and exit the cryptocurrency market. You should know that the issuance volume of TUSD in June 2019 was higher than that of PAX.Although it is not known why Binance finally chose Paxos, it can be said that the fate of Binance and TUSD began at that time. Not to mention that TUSD now has "Asian ancestry", which seems to be very compatible with Binance. As for Binance, which is now firmly in the top position in the industry, it did not choose to enter the game in a high-profile manner because of the previous experience of BUSD. Although there were joint challenges from USDC and BUSD supported by Binance, the past is like a passing cloud, and today USDT continues to maintain its dominant position in the field of centralized stablecoins. Multi-dimensional data such as liquidity, trading volume and trading pairs all show a crushing attitude. The parent company Tether's net profit in the first quarter of 2023 alone was US$1.48 billion. USDT, which is firmly in the Diaoyutai, not only does not need support. It has also been fined by regulators many times for its opaque reserves that have been criticized. USDT, which has been plagued by regulation, has previously been unable to automatically exchange 1:1 with compliant stablecoins on many trading platforms. Relying on FTX and DeFi, USDC (Circle) has achieved full development in the last bull market. Not only has it firmly sat in the position of the second largest stablecoin, but it has also received a total of US$400 million in financing from traditional US financial giants such as BlackRock and Fidelity in 2021. However, whether it is its close relationship with FTX as a minority shareholder, or the rumor that Circle reported to NYDFS in 2022 that "Binance reserves are not enough to support assets such as BUSD", as reported by Bloomberg, coupled with Binance US's development in the United States, Binance may have concerns about the large-scale adoption of USDC. On the other hand, TUSD, whether from its "Asian origin", long history, compliance and infrastructure construction, is a unique existence among existing options. In addition, the relationship between Binance and Tron is not as bad as many people imagine. Not only did Tron conduct an ICO on Bianance. And in 2019, after experiencing regulation, Binance restarted Launchpad and detonated the market with a strong money-making effect. Since the announcement of the restart of Launchpad, the price of BNB has risen from $6 to nearly $40 that year, an increase of more than 500%. At that time, the first project of Launchpad was BitTorrent, which was acquired by Tron founder Justin Sun in 2018.Importantly, under heavy regulatory pressure, Binance is likely to need a trustworthy and "stable" stablecoin partner from a reasonable and legal third-party perspective.