What Is Binance Coin
Launched in July 2017, Binance Coin (BNB) is a utility token created for users of Binance cryptocurrency exchanges. Account holders receive discounts when they purchase BNB and use it to pay brokerage fees on a Binance cryptocurrency exchange. They can also trade it for other crypto coins like Bitcoin (BTC). BNB runs on a "proof-of-staked authority" blockchain, a combination of proof-of-stake and proof-of-authority validation. It is a deflationary cryptocurrency with an initial supply of 200 million, reduced through quarterly auto-burns toward a target of 100 million.
The Binance Coin price is strongly influenced by fundamentals such as global macro market leading indicators, total crypto industry market capitalization and volume, and the health of the Binance exchange, the blockchain business it supports.
BNB Founders
Binance launched BNB tokens in June 2017 as the market for Bitcoin, and a number of altcoins were heating up to dazzling all-time-high prices. Zhou Changpeng founded Binance in 2017 and launched the exchange along with Binance Coin as the crypto trading platform's native currency.
Zhou, who goes by "CZ," had previous fintech experience building high-frequency trading programs for stockbrokers out of Fusion Systems, a software company he founded in 2005. In 2013 he joined the team of wallet developers for Blockchain.info. Zhou stepped down as CEO of Binance in November 2023 and was succeeded by Richard Teng.
BNB Purpose
Binance Coin helped raise money from blockchain investors to build and operate the crypto-trading company's exchange. It was first available by initial coin offering (ICO) in July 2017 during the ICO boom that year in which many new crypto ventures raised funds. Similar to a company's first issuance of stocks at an initial public offering (IPO), ICOs offer investors a first chance at investing in a new crypto venture with liquid tokens on a digital network mediated by a peer-to-peer app.
In addition to other benefits, BNB tokens provide holders with discounts on brokerage fees when trading among some of the platform's many cryptocurrency trading pairs, which it calls markets. This added multi-billion dollar liquidity channel helps the Binance exchange to execute buy and sell orders more efficiently.
BNB Circulation
In addition to being an investment vehicle for investors interested in adding a bit of Binance's business to their portfolio, BNB is designed to be a durable store of value as far as supply-and-demand economics go. Binance Coin is a deflationary currency with a hard maximum limit of 200 million on the supply of BNB tokens.
That circulating supply limit is an intentional design feature of Binance Coin. It builds a floor of resistance into the fundamentals underlying the Binance Coin price. The company likes to boost that deflationary upward pressure on the Binance Coin price with regular BNB token "burns" in which the exchange cryptographically locks up some of its own coins, so they can never be spent, permanently diminishing the total supply of BNB. This is a supply/demand method of sharing Binance profits with Binance Coin holders by decreasing the circulating supply of tokens (the way dividend-paying stocks do for investors using the more direct financial/accounting method).
Binance Coin Network
Originally operating on the Ethereum ecosystem as an ERC-20 token, Binance migrated BNB to BNB Chain (formerly Binance Smart Chain), the crypto platform's native blockchain that qualifies participating nodes using a combination of proof-of-stake and proof-of-authority. The Binance API is compatible with Python and other programming languages, and the Binance blockchain is programmed in Go, Python, Swift, and the Java and C languages.
Where Can You Buy BNB
Check our step by step guide on how to buy bnb.
