First published 2 June 2023, the day after the announcement. Expanded in October 2026 so a reserve report is not described as cash in your wallet. First Digital USD is a token that tries to stay near one US dollar. FD121 Limited issues it, under the name First Digital Labs. First Digital Trust Limited, a Hong Kong trust company, says it keeps the reserves in segregated accounts, in cash and similar liquid assets. Segregated means the issuer says those accounts are not mixed with the trust company’s own money. A sentence in a press release is not an audit you just read. The issuer publishes reserve reports. A report is a date. Stablecoins: useful, not magic is the category. What is USDC? is a different company’s dollar token. FDUSD is not USDC.
There is no fixed cap. New FDUSD is minted when the issuer accepts dollars, and the supply falls when the issuer redeems. Redemption is a process for the customers the issuer allows. It is not a button that turns a token in any wallet into a bank transfer. A wallet balance is not a claim the issuer has already approved you to cash out. If the reserves or the company fail, the token is a claim in a failure, not a dollar bill.
It launched on more than one chain. CoinDesk reported that, at launch, it would not be sold to retail buyers in Hong Kong, because the territory’s stablecoin rules were not in force. A rule about who may be sold to is not a feature of every copy of the token. An Ethereum FDUSD is not the BNB Chain copy. The wrong network is still the wrong city. ETH pays the fee on Ethereum. FDUSD does not. Nothing here is an instruction to redeem, to mint, or to buy FDUSD.
