Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has publicly admitted that he underestimated the importance of stablecoins during his time as Binance CEO, saying his read on this market has since changed. German crypto outlet BTC-ECHO documented the remarks in this report. The weight of this statement doesn’t come from the admission itself — it comes from who is making it: Binance auto-converted various stablecoin balances in user accounts into its own BUSD back in September 2022, was forced to reverse course after the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) ordered Paxos to stop minting BUSD in February 2023, and ultimately completed BUSD’s full wind-down by 2024. In other words, the world’s largest exchange already tried the path of “replacing USDT with an in-house stablecoin” — and that path didn’t work.
Editorial take: what this means for the card in your hand
The underlying structure of a USDT virtual card is always three layers: stablecoin (settlement asset) → issuer account (balance) → card network (Visa/Mastercard authorization). CZ’s self-correction is, in substance, an admission that pricing power at the first layer doesn’t sit with exchanges — it sits with the issuers of USDT / USDC. This affects different card types very differently:
- Exchange-affiliated cards — products like Binance Card, Bybit Card, and OKX Card have balances tightly bound to the exchange’s main account. Their advantage is frictionless top-ups; their risk is that policy variables move in tandem with the exchange’s own licensing progress. Once any jurisdiction requires that “only authorized e-money tokens (EMTs) may be used as a means of payment,” cards settled through these accounts are the first to feel it.
- Independent-issuer cards — MPCard (editorial pick variant MPCard Asia Elite, an Asia-Pacific-route virtual Visa) doesn’t depend on an exchange’s main account; ₮ received on-chain goes directly into the card balance, giving a shorter settlement path. This card type is close to immune to an exchange’s in-house stablecoin strategy.
Timeline expectations: within 7 days, expect no operational changes — this is a statement of opinion, not a regulatory action. Within 30 days, watch whether exchanges quietly adjust their stablecoin top-up whitelists on the back of this. Within 90 days, the thing genuinely worth watching is the list of usable stablecoins for European Economic Area (EEA) users — a list that has been repeatedly tightened since MiCA took effect. Readers planning long-term U-card use in Europe should first check the settlement-currency and account-ownership comparison in Best USDT Cards for EU Residents.
Historical parallels: three times stablecoins were “underestimated”
The first was the BUSD cycle of 2022–2024. Binance bet on its own stablecoin, then had to hand the traffic back to USDT after US regulators stepped in. What’s the same this time: an exchange has never been able to out-compete an issuer’s network effects on product merit alone. What’s different: back then the reversal was forced by regulators; this time it’s the party involved reviewing it voluntarily after the fact.
The second was USDC briefly de-pegging in March 2023 due to the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. The lesson from that episode was that “high compliance” doesn’t equal “short-term liquidity safety” — a large number of users who parked their entire card balance in a single stablecoin passively absorbed a discount within 48 hours. That lesson still applies today: a card balance is not an investment position and shouldn’t sit idle long-term. You can verify USDT’s reserve composition yourself on Tether’s official transparency page — the only primary-source data we recommend.
The third is the MiCA legislative timeline: the stablecoin (ART/EMT) chapters of Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 took effect on June 30, 2024, with the remaining provisions applying from December 30, 2024. Since then, according to public reporting, multiple exchanges operating in the EEA have imposed “sell-only” restrictions on trading pairs involving unauthorized stablecoins. Seen against this timeline, CZ’s remarks read less like a new revelation and more like a belated acknowledgment of an already-established fact.
Compliance boundaries: clearly permitted / gray zone / clearly restricted
Within the EU, stablecoins themselves are not prohibited, but who may issue them to the public and use them for payments is subject to a clear licensing threshold — this is the core of the EMT/ART regime. From the user’s perspective:
- Clearly permitted: holding stablecoins, trading them on compliant exchanges, and using an authorized issuer’s EMT for payments.
- Gray zone: virtual cards issued to EU residents by non-EU issuers, topped up with stablecoins that haven’t received EMT authorization. Currently, individual use is generally not prohibited, but the issuer may adjust which coins are available at any time due to compliance pressure.
- Clearly restricted: holding and matching unauthorized stablecoins long-term as a primary trading pair on EEA-based platforms.
Details and country-level differences are covered in the EU USDT Card Compliance Guide. The logic differs for readers in Asia-Pacific — there, the key variables are whether account jurisdiction, IP, and card BIN are consistent; see the Hong Kong Compliance Guide and Japan Compliance Guide. Readers unfamiliar with the U-card structure should start with What Is a U Card.
What to watch next
- Exchange stablecoin top-up whitelists: any quiet change by an issuer to the “supported top-up stablecoins” list in its help center is a harder signal than any executive’s public remark.
- Tether’s quarterly reserve attestation: the update cadence and any change in reserve composition directly affect the short-term certainty of redeeming a card balance.
- EEA stablecoin availability announcements: European users should rely on issuers’ official announcements, not media paraphrasing.
- Whether CZ follows through: there’s typically a 1–2 quarter lag between “admitting underestimation” and actual investment or product moves.
Editorial recommendation
Users holding independent-issuer USDT cards such as MPCard: no action needed. This news doesn’t involve any product, fee, or limit changes.
Exchange-affiliated card users (Binance Card / Bybit Card / OKX Card): no need to migrate, but it’s worth confirming this month which legal entity your account sits under and which stablecoins remain available — especially for EEA-registered users.
New applicants in Europe: don’t delay an application because of this statement — it’s not a regulatory action. But before applying, confirm whether the card’s settlement currency is supported long-term by the issuer in your jurisdiction.
Everyone: keep only 1–2 months’ worth of spending in your card balance. Whether stablecoins turn out to have been “underestimated” or “overestimated,” that trial-and-error cost shouldn’t land on your monthly subscription bill. All fees and limits should be verified against the issuer’s official page.