Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which we profiled a couple of months ago as they were closing in on their one month anniversary from launch has issued a Q1 update with a few noteworthy milestones. In addition, the exchange has also become integrated with cryptocurrency cloud trading application Coinigy.

For Coinigy, now under the BINA exchange ticker, beyond being able to use indicator tools on the Binance market charts, users can also view order books, market depth, and other information related to trading. Trading, as well as portfolio tracking capabilities for Binance, will shortly follow.

Binance also announced today they would be buying back and burning 986,000 BNB tokens (or just above USD $1.5M at current market value), equivalent to 20% of Binance’s first-quarter profit. Binance has previously stated they would take 20% of each quarter’s profit to buy back and burn BNB, until 50% (or 100M) of total BNB supply is burned.

CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao reported that first-quarter profit was $7.5M USD, he stated: “not bad for a project that’s only three months old. Especially considering we “only” raised $15M in our own ICO three months ago.”

Mr. Zhao went on to say:

“From a revenue perspective though, the first three months were not all smooth sailing. In the first month, Binance offered complete zero-fee trading, foregoing our income.” “In our second month, we had to deal with one of the most unexpected sharp turns in the regulatory space in China. We had to stop our ICO platform, delist a number of high volume coins, and issue refunds to all ICOs we had just completed. All of which were large money-losing propositions. But we were lucky – we survived.” “Through these tough times, we were honored to have our community standing steadfast behind us, giving us support. In our third month, we came out strong. This is a testament to the old saying “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.” We finished the quarter with a decent chunk of profit.”

Further updates:

– After the buyback will re-invest the rest of Q1 profits back into company growth, hopefully making the platform grow even faster and generating more revenue next quarter.

– Looking forward, he stated two goals: (1) to improve the Binance platform for better user experience and (2) wants to keep adding more utility to the BNB token.

– Will continue to list high-quality coins while applying unique and increasingly prudent review standards. Binance currently has over 240 different coins that have applied to list on Binance. With the backlog only increasing, not decreasing.

Zhao stated: “It takes time to read whitepapers, contact advisors, download and play with products, install wallets, check-in with the communities and social channels, check commits on GitHub, and more often than not, reading the source code. But not to worry, we are continuously refining our reviewing and selection process. Having a large pool of choices is always good for us in picking crème de la crème offerings, and also good for our users.”