What is Safu

"SAFU" plays on the word "safe" and first appeared in a YouTube video from content creator Bizonacci in 2018.

On March 7, 2018, Binance users woke up to unscheduled maintenance and could no longer log in to their accounts. The root cause of the maintenance was a malfunction in the SYS/BTC trading pair, causing hackers to exploit the security leak. To reassure nervous users that their funds were not at risk, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, tweeted, "Funds are safe."

Bizonacci uploaded a video called "Funds are Safu" after the tweet. The video subsequently went viral and coined the meme.

Later Binance joined the meme game by setting up Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), an insurance fund for emergency cases. In July 2018, Binance pledged 10% of all trading fees to the SAFU fund to protect user funds. The money is stored in a separate cold wallet. According to Binance, the Secure Asset Fund for Users was valued at 2 billion dollars in May 2023.

The Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and the viral video led to the term becoming a staple of crypto slang terms. Changpeng Zhao later helped popularize the meme, using the hashtag #safu several times and tweeting "Funds are SAFU" during subsequent maintenance of his cryptocurrency exchange.