the next day citing concerns about FTX's business practices and investigations by US financial regulators. On November 30, 2022, Binance purchased Sakura Exchange. The acquisition allowed Binance to re-enter the Japanese Crypto market. Binance coin (BNB) The company has launched two cryptocurrencies which it developed itself: Binance Coin (BNB), and BinanceUSD (BUSD). BNB launched July 2017, which started as an Ethereum token and later moved to Binance Smart Chain (BSC), launched September 2020. BSC later merged with the older Binance Chain and was rebranded into BNB chain. BNB Chain operates using "Proof of Staked Authority", a combination of proof of stake and proof of authority. It has 21 approved validators. As of 2021, Binance Coin was the cryptocurrency with the third highest market capitalization. Binance allows its users to pay fees on its exchange with BNB. BNB Chain supports smart contracts and is compatible with the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM). There have been multiple criticisms of Binance Smart Chain concerning its level of centralisation, which had led to several exploits on the network. BUSD BUSD, or Binance USD, is a US Dollar pegged stablecoin issued by Binance. According to Binance it is backed 1:1 by a reserve of US Dollars and was founded by them in partnership with Paxos who is the issuer of the token. Paxos holds the reserves only partially in cash deposited in their US bank accounts with the other part held in U.S. Treasuries. BUSD is natively issued on the Ethereum blockchain by Paxos. Binance creates Binance-Peg BUSD by locking the natively ERC-20 BUSD in a smart contract on the Ethereum Blockchain and issuing Binance-Peg BUSD equivalent to the amount held in reserve in the smart contract. Binance-Peg BUSD is native to BNB chain. In January 2023, Bloomberg reported that Binance-Peg BUSD “was often undercollateralized between 2020 and 2021. On three separate occasions, the gap between reserves and supply surpassed $1 billion.” A Binance spokesperson said the “process of maintaining the backing … has not always been flawless” but “has been much improved with enhanced discrepancy checks.” BUSD is a widely used stablecoin being, , the third largest stablecoin by market capitalisation following Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC). According to reports, the New York Department of Financial Services issued an order to Paxos to stop minting new BUSD tokens in February 2023. Legal status United States In 2019, Binance was banned in the United States