If you haven't heard of Binance, then you probably haven't been around in crypto. Binance is one of the leading centralized exchanges for crypto-currency and only launched back in 2017.

A Short Beginning

Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao or CZ in the crypto community. While you can find many articles online about CZ, he is a Chinese-Canadian coder that got his early start in building high-frequency trading systems for Wall Street traders.

Binance Founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao

In just 143 days after the launch of Binance, the exchange became ranked in the top 3 of all exchanges globally. During this time, Binance was already working on their native Binance Coin (BNB) and launched an ERC20 token on Ethereum for their ICO and raising $15 Million USD.

After the ICO, Binance began to see tremendous growth during the 2017-2018 bull rally and went from 2 million users to over 10 million by mid-2018.

Binance Coin

The Binance Chain mainnet went live on April 23rd, 2019 and is #8 in market cap according to CoinGecko at the time of this writing.

After seeing an all-time high of nearly $40 USD, the price took a hit in the bear market and currently is holding around $14.

What makes BNB stand out from the rest is that it is a Utility Token. The video below goes in-depth on some of the utilities that BNB has. (The video is a little outdated as Binance DEX has already launched.)

Utilities

Trading Fees

Binance exchange has trading fees like any other exchange. Holders of BNB can use the coin for their trading fees at a discounted price.

Launchpad

This project was launched to help other blockchain projects through IEOs and ICOs. However, if you wanted to invest in any of these launchpad projects, you could only do so with BNB. One of their most successful launchpad projects was the Matic Network.

Coin Burn

While blockchains like Bitcoin that have set rules and coin supply, BNB is able to do coin burns where an amount of BNB tokens can be removed from supply through smart contract features. Every quarter, BNB will be burned until 50% or a total of 100,000,000 BNB are removed from the issued supply total of 200,000,000 BNB. In basic supply and demand principles, coin burning should increase the value of BNB as demand grows.

Decentralized Exchange (DEX)

In order to use the Binance DEX, you're required to have BNB to trade for the tokens that are listed. The overall goal is to have the volume and liquidity from the main Binance exchange move to the DEX.

By the end of 2019, Binance has accomplished a tremendous amount in such a short amount of time and has increased the utility of the BNB token since.

5,321,482 BNB (US$207,338,000) burned (up from $120,000,000 worth of BNB at the end of 2018)

1,000,000+ users holding BNB

40% increase in the average number of daily BNB-holding users for 2019 compared that of 2018

180+ known use cases of BNB, up from 42 last year. -Binance Blog

Binance Team

If all that was mentioned so far is not enough to give BNB its value, maybe the assurance on the team that is behind the coin and how they have worked to increase the value of the coin. Aside from creating more utilities for BNB, the team is hard at work getting the world to recognize BNB and the value it holds. Ranging from working with charities/projects to starting the Binance Academy to help educate and spread wider adoption for blockchain technology.

In 2019, we… 1. Maintained our lead as the world’s foremost cryptocurrency exchange: US$2,852,591,354 average daily trading volume

15,000,000+ Binance users worldwide

180+ countries and regions where Binance are based

40+ countries where the Binance team is operating

184 tokens listed on Binance (up from 151 to start the year)

591 trading pairs on Binance (up from 396 to start the year)

16 total languages supported on the Binance.com

8,875,322 USDT worth of more than 200 types of tokens retrieved by Binance Support Team for thousands of users -Binance Blog

You can read the loooong list of what they have accomplished so far in their 2019 year review published on their blog.

With Binance leading the world as the top exchange with their BNB coin sitting in the top 10 by market cap, it's an asset that those in the crypto community see as a must-have in their portfolio. Will we see another big year for Binance and their native coin in 2020? *Shakes Magic 8 Ball*... Signs point to yes.