Binance Coin(BNB)

Short for ‘Build and Build’, BNB, formerly known as Binance Coin, is the native cryptocurrency of the Binance ecosystem. Launched in mid-2017 through an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) valuing each token at $0.15, BNB was used to raise funds for the marketing and development of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange. The ICO was a major success, raising around $15 million by selling 100 million BNB tokens to the public.  

Today, Binance Coin (now BNB) facilitates discounted crypto trading on Binance alongside giving holders access to the exchange's launchpad and various other products and services. Whilst Binance Coins were initially released as ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, they were swapped in 2019 to BNB coins on the Binance Chain, which has since merged with the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) to form the BNB Chain.

2020 marks the introduction of the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), a parallel blockchain to Binance Chain, designed to enable smart contracts and compatible with Ethereum's Virtual Machine (EVM), thus significantly expanding BNB's use cases, especially in DeFi and dApps.

Notably, BNB had an initial maximum supply of 200 million coins, but this has been periodically reduced through coin burns, aiming eventually to reduce the supply to 100 million coins. The auto-burn mechanism adapts the quantity of BNB to be burned according to the price of BNB and the number of blocks produced on the BNB Smart Chain in each quarter.  

Background and Development

Founded by Chanpeng Zhao — popularly known as CZ — and Yi He, Binance is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world in terms of daily trading volume. Powering this exchange is an entire ecosystem of offerings such as margin trading, P2P trading, swap farming, crypto derivatives trading, Binance Launchpad, Binance DEX, staking services, liquidity farming, NFT marketplace, and crypto loans. 

The Binance Chain, known for its efficient transaction processing and compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), soon became a hub for DeFi builders and users, thanks to its low gas fees and high performance. The BNB coin is at the heart of this ecosystem and BNB price has followed the exchange's growth. 

BNB's role in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space has been multifaceted. It's used to pay for transaction fees on the Binance Chain and Binance DEX, while offering users reduced trading costs on Binance. The token also finds application in various real-world use cases, including ecommerce payments, cross-border remittances, and as a medium in DeFi platforms and NFT purchases.

Historical Price Analysis

With Binance’s rapid rise in the crypto industry, its native coin BNB has also witnessed significant value appreciation over the years. However, the increase in BNB USD price was slow in the start, where it remained well under $50 between 2017 and early 2021. Even during the market-wide crypto bull run of 2017-18, BNB's all-time high price was only $24.71 (in January 2018).

However, in the month of May 2021, the entire crypto market witnessed a major uptrend, with many cryptocurrencies registering new all-time highs. Consequently, BNB price rallied from under-$50 to an all-time high of $690.93 on May 10, 2021 (an increase of 460,520% from the BNB ICO price). Moreover, BNB’s fully diluted valuation at the time stood at over $100 billion. 2021 was also the year when BNB Chain ecosystem witnessed a huge expansion with the massive growth of DeFi platforms.

In 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Binance and its founder with regulatory violations, leading to legal disputes. Amidst these challenges, BNB's price dropped to around $230 at the end of June.

By October, BNB's price fell to as low as $205 following Binance’s series of regulatory troubles, including withdrawal issues in Europe, and the overall negative market sentiment. 

How BNB Works

BNB can be freely sent between crypto wallets and used as a payment method. Besides powering the Binance ecosystem, BNB is also actively used for payments on various third-party platforms in the travel, entertainment, finance, and services sector. 

The Binance ecosystem comprises two blockchains – BNB Beacon Chain and BNB Smart Chain (BSC) – now recognized as one single entity, the BNB Chain. 

The BNB Smart Chain uses a distinctive consensus mechanism known as Proof of Staked Authority (PoSA). This mechanism is a fusion of Proof of Stake (PoS) and Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), where validators are selected based on their BNB staking amount. This approach ensures a balance between decentralization, security, and high performance, with a focus on reducing the energy consumption typically associated with blockchain networks. 

The BSC's governance model allows for a dynamic validator set, with elections occurring every 24 hours. This ensures a continuously evolving and participatory governance structure. The top 32 most staked nodes are selected as the next validator set, fostering an environment of active community involvement and stakeholder engagement.

A key feature of the BNB Smart Chain is its compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which allows developers to easily migrate or create decentralized applications (dApps) with Ethereum-like functionality. This compatibility has been a cornerstone in the growth of the DeFi ecosystem on the BNB Chain.

According to Binance, its network processes over 1,400,000 transactions per second, with a transaction fee of less than 0.10%. That said, Binance continues to control the BSC blockchain by vetting the block validators that it brings on board. This has also attracted criticism with respect to the lack of decentralization.

BNB News, Ecosystem, and Highlights

BNB price is, to a large extent, directly co-related to positive developments in the Binance ecosystem. For example, the value of BNB goes up when news of Binance's expansion plans comes to the fore.

The BNB burn is also a major driver of Binance Coin's price. Recently, in January 2022, Binance completed its 18th token burn, removing 1.68 million BNB coins from the circulating supply — worth roughly $795 million. BNB follows a deflationary mechanism per which a certain number of coins are burnt every quarter to eventually destroy 100 million BNB over a period of time. 

In February 2022, Binance’s two main blockchains were grouped together and called the BNB Chain. With this step, Binance aims to implement the MetaFi concept and build infrastructure that will power the growing new niche of metaverse finance.

In October 2022, Binance Bridge, a critical component of the Binance ecosystem, experienced a significant security breach. This exploit resulted in the unauthorized minting and theft of two million BNB tokens, valued at approximately $566 million at the time. The hack was executed through a sophisticated forging of low-level proof in a common library, which allowed the attacker to forge arbitrary messages and circumvent security protocols.

In 2023, BNB Chain's two critical infrastructures, opBNB and BNB Greenfield, saw notable advancements. opBNB crossed 23 million daily transactions by December, demonstrating its scalability and efficiency. It's designed to double transaction speeds and reduce gas fees significantly. BNB Greenfield, aiming to revolutionize data handling in Web3, made strides in improving data upload/download speeds and plans to integrate Artificial Intelligence for optimized storage solutions and off-chain computing.

Meanwhile, zkBNB is built on ZK Rollup architecture, which bundles numerous transactions off-chain and generates cryptographic proofs, often in the form of SNARKs (succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge). This technology ensures the validity of each transaction in the Rollup Block. As of 2023, zkBNB was in its testnet phase, with plans to transition to the mainnet in the first quarter of the year. 

Binance, the entity behind BNB Chain, faced significant regulatory scrutiny in 2023. The exchange was subject to regulatory actions from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These actions were centered around alleged failures to maintain adequate anti-money laundering protocols and accusations of secretly accessing customers' funds. 

As a result, Binance agreed to pay a substantial fine of $4.3 billion to the DOJ. These regulatory challenges led to major changes in Binance's leadership, with founder Changpeng Zhao stepping down from his position as CEO.

Frequently asked questions about BNB

1. Can you mine or stake BNB?

You cannot mine BNB as it is pre-mined, but you can stake your BNB holdings to earn staking rewards.

2. What are some of the best BNB wallets?

Some of the best Binance Chain supported wallets include MetaMask, Ledger Nano S, Trust Wallet, Guarda Wallet, Coinomi Wallet and Atomic Wallet.

3. What can you do with BNB?

If you have BNB coins, you can use them in multiple ways, both within and outside the Binance ecosystem. You can use BNB within Binance to pay a reduced transaction fee on Binance Exchange, access exclusive token sales on Binance Launchpad, stake BNB and spend BNB worldwide through Binance Visa Card. 

Outside Binance, BNB can be used on multiple third-party platforms.

4. How to buy BNB?

You can buy BNB from any well-known exchange platforms like HitBTC, eToro, MEXC, and Nexo. Look out for commonly used trading pairs like BNB/USDT, BNB/BTC, BNB/ETH, BNB/EUR, BNB/USD, or BNB/GBP to execute the exchange.