Binance 2nd Anniversary AMA With CZ: Highlights

During his fifth live ask-me-anything session, Binance CEO CZ addressed the extension of our 25% trading fee discount, the team’s commitment of BNB allocations to the token burn, and other important topics across the Binance ecosystem.

The below transcription from CZ’s live stream has been condensed and edited slightly for clarity.

So, this is the 5th AMA. Thanks for tuning in. There’s a couple of different topics I want to go through first - a few big steps we’ve taken. 

On 25% Fee Discount for Another Year

The first one is, we will continue to keep the 25% discount for using BNB to trade on Binance.com. According to the whitepaper, we should be reducing the discount from 25% to 12.5% on July 14. But with everything considered, we want to give back to the community, and we think that [the retention of the 25% discount] is the best for BNB token. We want to increase the utility of BNB, have more people to use it, instead of just increasing revenue for Binance.com. 

We want to continue the 25% discount for at least another year. We’re giving back more discounts to the community. That should help our trading volumes and encourage everybody to be more active. I do personally believe that it’s a positive decision for BNB and BNB holders.

On Margin Trading

We’ve released margin trading fully to everyone yesterday. And yesterday alone, over 10,000 signed up for margin accounts. So far, there’s more than $15 million borrowed for margin trading, so clearly there’s a very strong demand for that, and we’re happy to finally push the product out, and have more people use it. 

On the Latest BNB Burn

We’ve been discussing with all the Binance team members. And the unanimous decision by the Binance team is that they will not spend a penny from their ICO allocation of BNB, which is 80 million BNB. At the current rate, that’s currently worth US$2.4 billion. We’re not gonna cash that out, We’re gonna burn it all. We’re gonna allocate 100% of that allocation to the burn. 

What does this mean? Basically, the team will not claim pre-allocated tokens; the team gets nothing from the ICO. All BNB we have are either earned through our services or bought with our own money. I think this clearly shows that the Binance team is here for a mission, we’re not here for the money. That should boost the confidence of our community. 

On Upcoming Binance Futures Feature

We plan to begin public testing of the Binance Futures feature by the end of July, starting with a simulation market. The simulation market price will roughly follow the real Bitcoin price, which is the real contract price. We will do a simulation first. Then, in 10 to 20 days, we’ll make the futures testnet live.

When staking BNB? From @MVC_Bull

Right now, we don’t have any clear plans. We’re trying to get more people to use Binance Chain. Right now it’s about increasing the utility. 

What is your plan to develop and implement cross-chain trading in Binance DEX in the future? From @binanceforlife 

There are a lot of different plans for cross-chain trading. The thing that we encouraged the most before was for tokens to migrate 100% of their tokens to Binance Chain. For projects that use a very simple ERC-20 token––just to issue, freeze, lock, unlock and transfer––and there’s nothing smart contract-related, we encourage them to migrate to Binance Chain, because Binance Chain is faster, cheaper, easier, and it has native DEX support. It’s just simpler.

There’s a second category where, if you do require other features that Binance Chain does not support yet, such as smart contract features, etc. then you can migrate a portion of your token to Binance Chain.

That creates a bit of an inconvenience for users who are checking total supply, but in general, it’s not a big issue. For independent blockchains, we also encourage people to do pegging. With pegging, you can lock down a portion of the native tokens and issue a portion as Binance Chain tokens. That’s another way that’s quite easy to do today. There are development plans in progress already to build different interoperability bridges.

Any plans to increase the market awareness of binance dex (other than trading airdrops)? From @binanceforlife

We are doing many things to increase awareness of Binance DEX. We’re relying heavily on project teams too. This is why every month, we will select tokens on Binance Chain with high trading volumes to list on Binance.com. This will encourage the project teams to push Binance DEX into their communities and users, so they can get higher trading volumes on Binance DEX. There are many, many other things we’re doing to raise awareness, I can’t go into all the details here.

What makes your decentralized Binance DEX outstanding compared with others coming up with a competitor with the same idea and same platform? From @Bryan Yoong 

Eventually, we’re going to open-source Binance DEX. We’re not worried about people copying us. You can copy our source code and run the exact same DEX, but on the other DEX, you might not have the option to list on Binance.com, for example. Other project teams may or may not do airdrops as big as they do on Binance DEX. We do encourage people to copy it, fork it and make improvements because that would just improve the quality of the code base overall.

We haven’t open-sourced it just yet, because we want to have faster iterations with the current community team. But eventually, everything is going to be open-sourced.

Is there any plan for smart contracts feature in #BinanceChain? From @divergen_master

Actually, yes, we will probably support smart contracts in the future. There are plans and architectures are being discussed, as well as different models we’re considering, but we haven’t decided on one architecture yet, whether it’s layer 2 or native, etc. It will likely be an Ethereum-compatible smart contract engine.

On Binance Launchpad: 1-More tickets to longer = real #bnb holders? Increase hold days for launchpads for real #bnb holders? From @z_harriso

Be careful what you wish for. There are some discussions we have internally regarding Binance Launchpad.

Number one, we will probably pick up the pace for Launchpad projects. Right now, we do them roughly one project every 40 days. Given the number of good projects in the pipeline, we are likely to increase that to probably 5 projects over the next three months or so. Don't hold me on that, the pace will pick up, I think.

We do plan to increase the BNB holding period required for the next, next project and increase the holding period to 30 days. We think this will encourage people to hold BNB for longer while rewarding those who are long-term BNB holders. This has been a request from the community. Binance Launchpad will probably have those adjustments coming up.

Will BAM be open for U.S. residents before the September deadline? Thank you for all you do. From @BakkupBradley

The current plan is to get the Binance.US platform up before the deadline. The exact schedule depends on our partner in the U.S., so I don’t have detailed plans for that, but the plan is to serve U.S. users on that platform.  

A lot of my Twitter followers are US-centric and they ask a lot of questions. My general feedback is not to get overly anxious. I don’t have a lot of information about the U.S. platform, most of that information will come from our U.S. partner, which is BAM Trading Services. The goal is to better serve people.

What is BNB’s ultimate challenge at the moment? From @tc_ezen

We don't have an ultimate challenge. The goal is to increase BNB utility and always looking to increase the number of ways and places where people can use it, and that’s the overriding principle. And there are a lot of things to do, like getting more merchants adopted, getting more projects to support it and integrating with other projects, so there are many things we can do there, and we’re doing them. We’re making progress.

Do you have any plans to give any benefits to long-term $BNB holders? From @CryptosBatman

Our focus is to increase BNB utility, and we think that’s the best value we can add to BNB long-term. We do other things like airdrops, trading competitions, things like that, but most those have a more short-term impact, In the long term, I believe that the more utility there is, the more impact is there is for BNB holders.

Do you have any goals for when to add security tokens? From @CryptosBatman

Security tokens are very tricky. Just the definition of securities itself differs for different countries. Tokens that represent company shares, those are very clear securities in various countries, and those we generally stay away from.

Binance.com is a centralized exchange, and we tend not to overly focus on security tokens. We require project teams to seek. legal opinions on a project not being a security token. So we try not to step on other people’s toes, not to push boundaries there.

For Binance DEX, it’s different, validators are in different countries, and each country can interpret things differently.

What about WalletConnect for binance.com login? From @LukasBydzovsky

It’s a good idea, but it doesn’t work too well with centralized exchanges cause we do handle clearing, and we need custody/clearing of the funds before trading. Binance is a high-frequency trading platform, that may be more difficult.

When are we going to have a Binance Singapore meetup?‏ From @CryptoJax0 

We’ll ask our Binance Singapore team to organize that and hopefully, that’ll be soon.

Are there plans to open exchange in Indonesia to facilitate the withdrawal of rupiah? From @CoinCoin

I think we want to be able to facilitate everything. There are discussions with Indonesia partners, and while nothing has been announced yet, we do plan to offer more fiat on-ramps in different countries. Stay tuned.

When BINANCE VISA CARD? From @Vytukas

Most likely we will work with other partners to provide a white-label, Binance VISA card. Wait for an official announcement, but we’re actively looking into it.

How will you celebrate Binance's birthday? From @MBG Buzzer

Actually, for this year, we didn’t do much celebration offline. Last year, on our first birthday, we flew a number of people to a location. But this year, most of the Binance teams are doing team dinners themselves, in different locations. Also, since there are a lot of things coming up, there's a lot of work going on, we decided not to disrupt everybody’s work. Our team’s size is quite large now, so we decided not to do any fancy celebrations. Each of the smaller teams. will do a nice dinner, which is already luxurious for our team. Usually, we order delivery like take-out and pizza.

What was his biggest failure as an entrepreneur? From @Arturo

If you ask any entrepreneur, there are many failures they face. For me, maybe if we did Binance sooner, it would be better. 

In the 2 years that Binance has been up and running what is your proudest achievement? From @Darc_Binance

My biggest value is bringing the team together. We gathered a great, super-strong team, and I think that’s my biggest contribution to Binance. And these days I'm not doing any operational work myself. I do my own Twitter, I have a lot of meetings but not too operational-related. Most of the operations in Binance are done by others on the team. This is my biggest value contribution.

When do you think we will start to see the big crypto mass adoption take place? From @CryptosBatman

I think mass adoption is a gradient scale. And we’ve seen a lot of it already. We already see Walmart, Microsoft, Uber, and Facebook adopting crypto.  The number of people using crypto is bigger than the populations of some countries. If you say mass adoption being over 50% of the people on the planet, I think no currency has done that. No currencies have over 50% population adoption, no company, no organization, no country has more users than that either. But adoption will get faster.

What's your favorite crypto use case after fundraising? From @LukasBydzovsky

I used Bitcoin to pay for my hotel [room] 5 years ago. Room service, everything charged and paid in BTC back then. That was a great experience, BNB didn’t exist back then. More recently, I participated in the [TronBET Binance Charity poker game]. I think the gaming industry will be huge later. The user experience is so much better now with crypto because wallets are faster, you can play for real money, the wallet is a browser plug-in, and the game is all in a browser. Gaming will be huge for crypto, including e-commerce and others. There will be a lot of different industries where we will see other applications, but I think gaming will be big.

What we all wanna know, what is next @cz_binance? @Crypto_nium

There is a lot of different stuff happening and actually, I don't really know the different stuff happening. There’s futures, margin, there is always endless stuff to do, I can’t reiterate all of them. all of them.

What are three things you do regularly -other than working of course? @iguessitsokay00

I have a regular life, I read books, I exercise a little bit. I buy chin-up bars everywhere I go. I enjoy hanging with friends. I am just a very normal guy.

Do you lift bro? @smkizzle1

I do go to the gym a little but, but not regularly, about once a week or so, but other times I use the chin-up bar or I do push-ups. I wish to go more but the schedule is a bit hectic.

What is your favorite drink?

I drink randomly. I guess gin and tonic.

What about the iOS app for Binance?

The iOS app, we got delisted from the Apple app store a couple of months ago, and we are still working with Apple to try to get it back. 

Have you ever visited Germany?

I did go to Germany not long ago, but that was when I passed 4 different countries in 1 hour: Liechtenstein, Austria, and a few others.

How is Binance dealing with security following the hack earlier this year?

I explained in a recent video interview. It cost us a lot, but it’s really a blessing in disguise. It gave us an opportunity to revamp our security measures and we did six months to a year’s worth of work in one week. Typically, it’s hard to do because it’s disruptive with other business initiatives, but we were able to do that fairly quickly. Binance is now, by far, the most secure exchange. We employ a lot of very strong techniques now.

Do you think crypto has a future in China?

My perspective is that crypto doesn't have boundaries. So crypto is crypto. You own a private key, a string of characters, and it doesn’t have a concept of borders. So it will be everywhere.

When is the convention for next year?

We haven’t decided yet. We do have a team that organizes conferences and they were planning to do 2-3 conferences a year, but I asked them to scale it down to 1 a year.  The last conference in Singapore was around January. The next one will be around that time as well.

I sold 186 BTC at $4,000. Please help. What can I do?

Don’t sell.

What’s your reaction to Trump’s tweet [about crypto]?

From my perspective, everyone has a different opinion. For something to have value, to have a future, all we need is a mass of people that understand and use it.

Everyone can think what they think. It’s true, Trump didn’t mention BNB, so Trump does have the potential to like BNB.

BNB utilities in the future

We’re adding more BNB use cases, to the point that when we do the charts that show BNB use cases, it gets so busy.

Please start the alt season...

The start of the season is something that we don’t do. We provide a platform for people to trade. We’re a platform provider. Whether the season starts or not depends on the traders.

Can we order pizza with BNB?

I’m sure there are places where you can buy pizza with BNB, but not a whole lot of places

Why does Binance freeze accounts?

We do have to comply with KYC/AML and we also work with almost every law enforcement in the world. We have a very healthy, cooperative relationship with all of them. If an account is being flagged as suspicious, there’s a chance that we’ll freeze the account. As a centralized service provider, we have to do that. Typically, we’d ask for more evidence and supporting information.

Sometimes, a law enforcement agency will ask us to freeze an account and if there’s an active investigation going on, we can’t respond to the user. That would be the only case that Binance won’t respond after freezing an account, you are most likely involved in some law enforcement investigation, the choice is not on us.

Any plans to visit UAE?

I did visit last year and these days, I tend to stay in Asia.

Thanks for tuning in. Till the next time, thank you, guys!

Updated on July 27, 2022.