SAFU is the acronym for the “Secure Asset Fund for Users,” an insurance fund established by Binance for emergency cases.
“SAFU” plays on the word “safe” and first appeared in a YouTube video from content creator Bizonacci in 2018. Bizonacci uploaded a video called “Funds are Safu” in 2018 after Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, tweeted the phrase “Funds are safe,” following unscheduled maintenance. The video subsequently went viral and coined the meme.
On March 7, 2018, Binance users woke up to an unscheduled maintenance period 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 tweeted “All funds are safe.”