Summary

Binance Coin (BNB) an ERC20 token, was released to the public for purchase as an ICO on July 01, 2017. The initial use case for BNB was for it to be used as a means to pay any fees that a user would incur on the Binance Exchange Platform, including but not limited to; exchange fees, withdraw fees, and listing fees. By using BNB to pay the following exchange fees, users are entitled to annual discount rate later outlined.

Binance exchange has been a strictly crypto-to-crypto exchange since Mid-2017 and has been establishing itself to the crypto world as one of the most sought-after and noticeable cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.

Distribution

The total amount of coins at the time of the ICO was 200,000,000BNB with a plan to sell 100,000,000BNB during the ICO phase with the rest of the BNB (100,000,000) allocated to the founding team and investors.

With the following vesting plan set out for the Team:

BNB Vesting Plan

Source: Binance Whitepaper

Company Foundation

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, proposed his whitepaper as a solution to some major problems occurring with other cryptocurrency exchange projects. Binance was to provide a user-friendly exchange built with the right team and advisors to ensure its sustainability. Their mission was to utilize their team’s years of experience in creating financial systems to build a secure platform built from the ground up with a sound technical architecture that is put together the right way. Along with providing its users a deep liquidity pool with exceptional customer service in multiple languages.

Team

Before starting Binance, Changpeng Zhao founded BijieTech, providing exchange software to over 30 exchanges in Asia. Roger Wang, James Hofbauer, Paul Jankunas, Allan Yan, and Sunny Li are also apart of the founding team who were also part of the BijieTech team with Changpeng. These members decided that when the Binance ICO phase was completed, they would all abdicate their duties at BijieTech and solely focus on the future progression of Binance.

This team along with a strong team of Advisors, their combined traditional finance and cryptocurrency experience has allowed Binance to progress in the crypto world faster than even they would have imagined.

Token Economics

ICO

Binance’s ICO lasted 16 days raising close to US $15,000,000 with its investors using both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Monetary value isn’t the only thing Binance gained from their ICO. By the end of the ICO, they had close to 20,000 registered seed users. Another benefit from it was the positive PR that was provided to their target market. The Binance team is ecstatic about the results of their ICO and were more than ready to provide its users with what they promised.

BNB Discount

In a way to incentivize its users to invest into Binance during their ICO, Binance promised discounted exchange rates to any user who pays for fees incurred on the Binance Exchange with BNB:

Coin Burn

Binance included in their plans scheduled coin burns until they have burned a total of 50% of their total coin supply (100MIL BNB). Binance plans to use 20% of its quarterly profits to buy back BNB from its users every quarter until they have burned 100 million BNB. In October 2017, 986,000BNB were burned, followed by another 1.8 million BNB in early 2018. As the company increases its profits more coins will be burned.

A possible reason for Binance to burn 50% of their coins would be to continually increase its value by decreasing the total available supply, and if the BNB demand stays the same after the burn, it will cause the price of the now decreased supply of BNB to increase. However, this concept has yet to be proven, after Binance went through with their second burn back in early 2018, the price of each BNB decreased by around 60% only a few days after. No single method is a guarantee in the crypto market.

Growth

What Binance has achieved with their community is unprecedented. Eight months into operations they had reached close to 8 million total registered users from just 1 million 3 months prior. By mid-March 2018, they moved to the top ranking spot worldwide in 24-hour trading volume.

With first providing users 5 tradeable cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, LTC, NEO (ANS), and their native coin BNB), Binance now provides its users with over 100 different cryptocurrencies like ZCoin (XZC), CyberMiles (CMT*), and Ripple (XRP) and many others.