First Digital USD (FDUSD) — Price, Peg & Arbitrage Tracker

After Paxos (issuer of BUSD) was ordered by New York DFS to stop minting BUSD in early 2023, Binance needed a new in-house stablecoin. FDUSD was chosen as the replacement, and Binance offered 0% spot trading fees on FDUSD pairs to drive adoption. This created a structural advantage: trading BTC/FDUSD on Binance at 0% fee vs BTC/USDT at 0.1% fee. This fee difference creates small but consistent arbitrage opportunities between FDUSD and USDT pairs on Binance.

FDUSD is newer and carries more risk than USDT or USDC due to: (1) Smaller issuer (First Digital Trust vs Tether/Circle) with less transparency history. (2) April 2024 temporary de-peg to $0.87 due to controversy (recovered in ~1 week). (3) Limited exchange availability — mostly on Binance. (4) HK regulatory framework is newer than US/EU. For arbitrage, it's fine to hold briefly. For storage, stick to USDT or USDC.

Main FDUSD arb: Binance's 0% fee on FDUSD pairs vs 0.1% on USDT pairs creates a ~0.1% structural advantage per trade. Buy BTC/FDUSD on Binance (0% fee) and simultaneously sell BTC/USDT elsewhere (0.1% fee) = capture the 0.1% fee differential as profit. This is low-risk but requires simultaneous execution and converts FDUSD to USDT at the end via a swap. Also monitor FDUSD/USDT price itself — it fluctuates ±0.2% creating direct stablecoin-to-stablecoin arb.

In 2026, FDUSD is primarily on Binance (the home exchange). Limited availability on: OKX (listed), Gate.io (listed), and some DeFi protocols on BNB Chain. It is NOT available on Coinbase, Kraken, or most Western exchanges. This illiquidity outside Binance is both the risk and the opportunity — FDUSD/USDT spreads on non-Binance venues can be larger than USDT/USDC spreads.