TrueUSD (TUSD)

History, technology and key data — no opinions, no advice

Historical price evolution of TrueUSD

Daily historical data. Updated automatically.

TrueUSD (TUSD) has its roots in 2017, when Rafael Cosman (formerly Google Brain and Palantir), Danny An, Stephen Kade and Tory Reiss founded TrustToken in California. The team, formed by professionals from Stanford, UC Berkeley, Palantir and Google, created the project with the objective of tokenising real-world assets on blockchain.

In January 2018, TrustToken launched TrueUSD (TUSD), positioning itself as the first regulated stablecoin with 1:1 dollar collateralisation verified by independent third parties. A distinctive characteristic of the project was that the backing dollar never touched TrustToken's hands, but rather was held in escrow deposit accounts managed by regulated fiduciary companies. That same year, TrustToken received 20 million dollars in a strategic round led by a16z, with participation from BlockTower Capital and Founders Fund Angel.

During 2019, the project reinforced its focus on transparency. In March, TrustToken signed an agreement with audit firm Armanino to offer real-time attestations of the reserves backing TUSD. In December of the same year, they launched TrustExplorer, a transparency platform that allowed real-time verification of the reserve ratio, making TUSD the first stablecoin with real-time attestations by independent third parties.

The project experienced significant changes in its leadership in July 2020, when Danny An, CEO and co-founder, was dismissed by the board of directors led by Rafael Cosman. An was negotiating the sale of TrueUSD to Justin Sun (TRON) when he was expelled, and subsequently filed a lawsuit claiming approximately 100 million dollars in damages. In December 2020, Techteryx Ltd., a British Virgin Islands company linked to real estate, entertainment and technology sectors in Asia, acquired TrueUSD, whilst Archblock (formerly TrustToken, which rebranded in September 2022) continued managing operations for more than two years.

In July 2023, Techteryx assumed direct management of TUSD, with TrueCoin LLC taking charge of daily operations. The project faced challenges in January 2024, when TUSD temporarily lost the peg, falling to 0.926 dollars on Poloniex following Binance's decision to exclude TUSD from Launchpool projects and eliminate zero-commission trading promotions, which resulted in an 88% drop in BTC/TUSD volume. On 6th February 2026, Archblock LLC, the company that created TrueUSD, filed for bankruptcy (Chapter 11) in Delaware, in a case that connects to the bankruptcies of FTX, Celsius and Prime Trust through 32.3 million dollars in investments and active litigation.

TrueUSD operates as an ERC-20 stablecoin that maintains a 1:1 parity with the US dollar through a full collateralisation system. When a user wishes to acquire TUSD, they must deposit dollars in a designated bank account, after which smart contracts automatically mint the equivalent amount of tokens. The reverse process functions symmetrically: when redeeming TUSD for dollars, the tokens are burnt and the user receives the corresponding bank transfer. This minting and burning dynamic is available on more than 12 blockchains, including Ethereum, TRON, BNB Chain, Avalanche and Polygon, which enables its cross-platform use.

The custody architecture completely separates the backing funds from the control of the issuing team. The dollars are held in escrow accounts managed by regulated fiduciary companies, subject to daily audits carried out by the firm Moore Hong Kong. Since 2023, TrueUSD incorporates Chainlink Proof of Reserves technology, which verifies on-chain that the total token supply does not exceed the bank reserves before authorising the minting of new TUSD. Both the issuance and redemption processes require KYC/AML verification, adding a regulatory compliance layer to the stablecoin's technical mechanism.

Data verified against external sources. Some values may have changed since the last update.