10th BNB Burn | Insights and Expectations for the Future of BNB

For our 10th quarterly BNB Burn (October to December 2019), Binance burned 2,216,888 BNB, equivalent to 38.8 million USD worth of tokens. CZ discusses BNB’s value amid the fast pace of growth of the Binance ecosystem.

Fellow Binancians,

Binance has conducted its 10th quarterly burn, amounting to 2,216,888 BNB. This burn, which represents activity across Binance spot, margin, and futures exchanges, as well as the various solutions, divisions, and partners that use BNB, from October to December 2019, permanently took away about 38.8 million USD worth of BNB out of circulation. (See the transaction records here: Transfer Transaction 1, Transfer Transaction 2, and Burn Transaction.)

This is the 2nd biggest burn in USD terms and the 3rd highest burn in BNB terms. Moreover, the USD value of the BNB burn grew for a fourth consecutive quarter.

The 10th quarterly burn represented the first full quarter that we factored in the performance of our most recent new products. Last year, we launched Margin Trading in July, Lending in August, and Futures in September. We also drastically increased our roster of fiat-to-crypto options, making our platform more accessible to new users. Right now, we support the use of 24 global currencies to buy crypto on Binance.

The fourth quarter of 2019 was the first full quarter of Binance Futures operations. Since its launch, Binance Futures hit the ground running. What began as just a Bitcoin futures contract exchange has since expanded into a platform that features nine perpetual contracts, three of which had launched just this week (ETC, LINK, and TRX).

Binance Futures now regularly surpasses the Binance Spot exchange in terms of daily trading volumes, even when we only offered Bitcoin perpetual contracts. I’d say that Futures is the biggest catalyst for our coin burn figures this quarter and in the succeeding quarters to come.

October to December 2019 also represented the first full quarter that our American partner Binance.US has been live. Daily trading volumes on Binance.US have been on an upward trajectory, and among the various exchanges in the Binance ecosystem, Binance.US currently has the third-highest volume. Fiat-to-crypto options such as Binance.US, including fiat onramps on Binance.com and region-specific partner exchanges in Singapore, Australia, Uganda, and Europe/U.K. (via Binance Jersey), also contribute to BNB utility in a major way.

While we surely made major strides this past quarter, we also acknowledge that the overall cryptocurrency market has been rife with ups and downs during the fourth quarter. Bitcoin reached as low as $6,600 and as high as $9,500. The fluctuations weren’t as wide as the third quarter of 2019 when the range was $8,000 to $13,000, but by the recently concluded quarter, we’re better positioned to take advantage of these fluctuations while still offering some of the lowest fees in the market, anywhere in the world.

While Binance’s operations play a role in the BNB burn process, we have seen in recent quarters that BNB is slowly but surely decoupling from Binance’s core operations. Ever since we launched Binance Chain in April 2019, BNB drastically increased its utility. We began 2019 with 30+ use cases, and we ended it with 200+.

The continued support of the Binance community to BNB, Binance Chain, and Binance DEX, as well as the ongoing integration of Binance Chain into more major blockchain solutions, has also factored into BNB’s progress. For instance, BUSD, our US dollar-pegged stablecoin created on Binance Chain, is gaining traction as a major stablecoin in the market. It’s now supported in dozens of exchanges and blockchain solutions. While BUSD is a relatively new stablecoin, we have lofty goals for it. This is because we believe that the more widespread BUSD and other Binance Chain-based stablecoins become, the more utility and value it brings to BNB, as Binance Chain’s native token. In the long term, Binance’s operations could have a smaller impact on BNB’s valuation, and we wouldn’t worry about it, especially if it means that BNB is becoming independently utilized by more parties around the world.

I acknowledge that BNB is still some distance away from its ATH last June, and I’m still mystified that that’s the case. But I don’t worry about it as much, because we view BNB as a long-term play, and many in the Binance community continue to use and hold BNB. We’ve kept our heads down and BUIDL our way during the crypto winter of 2018, when BNB sank from $24 at the start of the year to $5, and in various dips that come before and after it. Because it’s the same BUIDL philosophy that drove BNB to all-time-highs of $40 in 2019, making BNB the first coin to come out of the previous bear market in 2018 and the first coin to beat the previous ATH of $24. We will do the same and keep BUIDLing and keep launching new solutions and enhancements that our users want.

Looking ahead to this quarter, expect the same tenacity, if not even more, from the Binance team. As I said during my New Year Message, we see 2020 as the year of adoption. 2020 is the year when everyone will have a clear vision (heh) about the possibilities brought by crypto and blockchain. And we intend to be a major player in bringing that widespread adoption worldwide, through fiat-to-crypto options, new and better services, and a more cohesive blockchain ecosystem.

We’re just two weeks into 2020, and the total market cap of the crypto industry has already spiked from $192 billion to $245 billion. We have also seen Binance launching new P2P services in Vietnam, making investments in Korea, and initiating a partnership in Japan with TaoTao, a subsidiary of Yahoo! Japan. Binance Futures also added 3 new contracts in just the last week. I’m excited to see what this year brings not only for Binance but also for the world of crypto as a whole.

- CZ, Binance CEO



