Binance, one of the biggest names in the cryptocurrency space, is pushing the boundaries on the belief that they are just a crypto exchange with its latest move indicative of a company that wants a foothold in every aspect of the cryptocurrency space. The company has now announced its mining pool “Binance Pool.”

This new mining pool will operate with no fees until the end of May, after that, the fee will go up to 2.5 percent. It is also reported that about 15 of Binance’s staff will work full-time towards the pool’s operation. This move more towards mining, with Binance already supporting Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mining mechanisms, helps boost the potential and draw of the company.

Its integration with the entire Binance ecosystem will allow miners to easily transfer funds between Binance Pool and the company’s various platforms, including trading, lending, and staking.

However, the power that Binance already wields in almost every aspect of the crypto space is starting to be of concern, especially with a step towards mining, as there are constant fears about centralization when it comes to such moves.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, head of Binance Pool Lisa He stated, “We aim to establish a comprehensive platform for miners that will bring more possibilities to the mining industry by bridging traditional mining to financial services.”

Binance founder and chief executive Changpeng Zhao also added, “As an integral part of the global crypto market, empowering miners will therein enable significant growth and scale in the larger industry.”

Moving forward

This news comes off the back of a recent announcement from Binance that it had released a new whitepaper by the Binance Chain developers which specify a new blockchain that can run complex smart contract functionality within the Binance Coin ecosystem.

And, just before that Binance announced it had acquired a popular data site for blockchain projects, Coinmarketcap. This acquisition also stirred up concerns over how much influence and power Binance could wield in the space, and even how much data it could manipulate.

Going central?

Binance has the potential to become another major pool on the scene which would dent the decentralized mining space of Bitcoin, and this has been pointed out by certain members in the community.

Twitter user ‘HsakaTrades’ tweeted a chart of Bitcoin’s hash rate distribution accompanied by the caption: “This hash distribution chart is soon going to be composed of just one colour.”