Social encounters

In an exclusive interview at the recent CryptoCompare conference in London, Binance’s chief growth officer Ted Lin revealed to Coin Rivet the exchange’s top growth markets and future plans to increase user engagement.

Growth in Vietnam, Russia, and Turkey

According to Ted Binance has “definitely crossed the 10 million user mark”. Binance was surprised to discover that Vietnam, Russia, and Turkey were “three of our top five” growth markets. He told us that Binance wants to “become closer with the community”, and it is looking to do this on the ground-level at meetups around the world.

Growing user engagement

Ted said that features like adding margin trading “is one of those products that may not definitively expand the user base in terms of the number of unique users”, but instead “helps grow user engagement”.

Other initiatives like the IEO platform Binance Launchpad are also helping to keep users on the platform. Lim added that the company isn’t letting its IEO vetting process slide, but in fact, it’s “becoming even more rigorous”.

On the exchange’s current priorities, he said that the team was currently focused on the Binance DEX, claiming that it is currently the “DEX with the most volume in the world”.

Binance is soon to launch futures trading.

During the presentation at the Asia Blockchain Summit in Taipei on Tuesday, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, founder and CEO of the exchange, showcased a futures trading interface on Binance with features including longs and shorts on crypto assets.

“Binance will be launching a futures platform very soon. I don’t have the exact date yet. The simulation test version will be live in a few weeks,” he said. Referring to the screenshot of the interface showed on the stage, Zhao added:

He indicated in his presentation slide that the leverage could be up to 20 times and will be offered for trading on bitcoin initially. While a firm releasing date of the feature is not yet set, a Binance spokesperson told CoinDesk it plans to launch the test in about two weeks from now.

The futures trading feature comes after the firm rolled out margin trading on the platform last month.

“Margin trading will roll out to all users first (around July 11 or so), then futures testnet will come about a week after that,” the spokesperson added.

1. We like how Binance Chain works

2. We like Binance DEX’s chances

3. We want Binance Chain to support our tokenized privacy-preserving ecosystem

4. We see Binance Chain as a great blockchain for decentralized finance

5. We want Binance Chain to power our payment system for our upcoming streaming apps

6. We want to be the first crypto staking platform on Binance Chain

7. We like the support given to us by the entire Binance ecosystem

8. We want to be fully interoperable with the Binance ecosystem while maintaining our mainnet

Several Binance employees haven chosen to take their salary and other bonuses in BNB over fiat. But instead of regularly taking out cash, many are holding off, under the belief that the coin’s stellar growth will continue long into the future. In fact, this stockpiling of BNB has grown to a staggering amount.

Changpeng Zhao tweeted that the grand total being held by Binance employees is 32 million BNB ($1.2 billion). Employees are able to spend them as they like but haven’t and instead, are in favor of HODLing for the long term. Zhao stressed that all the coins are unlocked, meaning the employees can take them any time they wish, but are choosing to keep them safe in the Binance cold storage.

The disclosures were revealed when the exchange split up its cold storage of BNB into four wallets. CZ announced the movements ahead of time to stop speculation about what the coins were being moved for.

But are the employees making a wise decision?

Well, according to Messari, the yearly return on investment (ROI) for Binance Coin (BNB) over the last 12 months was 154 percent. In the last six months however, the ROI has ballooned to 560 percent. Part of the reason it has been trending upwards in recent months–and wasn’t affected by the bitcoin bear market of 2018–was down to Binance’s strategy of frequently ‘burning’ BNB to constrict supply.

ELROND (ERD). Elrond is a high-throughput public blockchain aimed at providing security, efficiency, scalability, and interoperability via Adaptive State Sharding and a Secure Proof of Stake consensus mechanism. ALGORAND (ALGO). Algorand is a permissionless, pure proof of stake blockchain that ensures full participation, protection and speed within a truly decentralized network. Institutional Market Insights — Q2 2019. Binance Research analyses the results and insights provided in the first ever survey completed exclusively by the largest VIP and institutional clients within the Binance ecosystem.

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Leslie from Binance OTC Trading desk summarizes the results of the latest institutional and VIP client survey done by the Binance Research team.

Travelbybit Founder/CEO Caleb Yeoh joins Wei to talk about: the origin story for TBB; travel and tourism as a huge use case for crypto; Australia leading the world in crypto regulation and innovation; and how Binance is helping TBB to become the blockchain ecosystem’s Expedia.

Blockchain Charity Foundation (Binance BCF)

Binance BCF delivered solar panels and school materials to 15 schools in Uganda, funded via the first annual Binance Charity Poker Cup.

Launchpad

Binance announced its next project: Elrond, a sharding-based public blockchain network. Elrond has recently raised investments from Binance Labs, Electric Capital, NGC, Maven11 and Authorito Capital among others.

Sharding is a well-known concept for horizontal partitioning of databases, and several firms, including Elrond, are pushing the boundaries of applying sharding to public blockchains as a means to increase their throughput capacity. Elrond has developed a bleeding-edge form of state sharding, known as “Adaptive State Sharding,” which enables the network to rival centralized cloud networks without sacrificing the security and decentralization advantages of blockchains.

Binance Labs contributed to a $1.9 million private round alongside many other investors.

Elrond will be the sixth project that will receive support from Binance in the field of raising capital, as well as benefit from Binance insights and experience.

Learn more about Elrond in Binance Research’s in-depth report here: https://info.binance.com/en/research/ERD-2019-06-20-d893c3.html.

To learn more about Binance Launchpad and pre-registration information for Elrond, visit: https://launchpad.binance.com/

Elrond also made part of their technology open source, in an effort to start onboarding developers from around the world.

Stay tuned for the latest updates via Elrond’s official Telegram: https://t.me/ElrondNetwork and Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElrondNetwork