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Binance Blog

11th BNB Burn | First Quarter Highlights and Notes from CZ

2020-04-18

For our 11th quarterly BNB Burn (January to March 2020), Binance burned 3,373,988 BNB, equivalent to 52.5 million USD worth of tokens. 

Fellow Binancians, 

Binance has conducted its 11th quarterly burn, amounting to 3,373,988 BNB. This burn, from January to March 2020, permanently took away about 52.5 million USD worth of BNB out of circulation. This is the biggest BNB burn ever recorded, in terms of both BNB and fiat volume. For reference, see the relevant links for transfer [Link 1 | Link 2] and burn.

Achievements

The 11th quarterly burn represented business activity from the first quarter of 2020, during which Binance Futures grew to be the No. 1 crypto futures exchange in the world by volume, with 24 perpetual contracts. We maintained our leading position in spot trading with 600+ trading pairs. We also continued expanding our fiat-to-crypto channels, supporting 42 major fiat currencies with a combination of peer-to-peer trading, credit card purchases, and direct bank deposits. 

There are numerous other achievements, product rollouts, and initiatives in Q1, including:

  • Launch of the Binance Cloud decentralized open platform. 

  • Global launch of Binance P2P, with support for 12 fiat currencies as of the end of March (plus two more after that), as well as a worldwide Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Merchant Program.

  • Expansion of the Binance Broker Program to more than 100 partners, as well as broker support for Binance Futures.

  • Introduction of the Binance Widget, with the initial rollout on the Brave browser.

  • Innovations at Binance Futures such as isolated margin mode and a cross collateral feature that includes BTC and BUSD.

  • Investments in BxB (South Korean fintech company) and Numbers (blockchain protocol).

  • Establishment of a $50 million Blockchain for India fund in collaboration with WazirX.

  • Binance Charity’s launch of the Crypto Against COVID project, a $5 million endeavor that is our charity arm’s biggest yet.

All of the above contributed to the high burn number for Q1.

More Volume in Q1

The world changed quite a bit in the past three months. The coronavirus swept across the earth, causing economic activities in the entire world to shut down, pausing almost all economic activities. Many established economies are now facing downturns or outright depression. Governments printing money at unprecedented rates trying to save the economy, while job losses are passing historic records. 

While economic activity has slowed in many non-essential sectors and bitcoin price wasn’t able to escape the drop in tandem with stock prices, we have seen a sharp rise in crypto activity, both in terms of trading volumes and user visits. Most exchanges are seeing 3-5x more traffic. Binance has seen more increases than that, with Binance Futures rising to the No. 1 spot in trading volume and market share, for example.

This is in sharp contrast to previous price drops, which usually leads to lower trading volumes after the price stabilizes. This time, we are seeing fierce activity at lower prices. One possible cause is that people are more interested in crypto this time. There’s also the possibility that more people have more time at home and end up trading crypto. Regardless of what drives people to trade, we work hard to be the main hub of liquidity for this activity, as we continuously release more products to the market.

Turbulent Times and Our Crypto Against COVID Response

The world as we know it will be changed forever, from social norms such as shaking hands, to economic policies of different countries. Understanding the impact of these changes and properly adjusting to them will be key in success for the future. Learn to protect yourself.

During this difficult time, Binance Charity has been actively involved in helping various countries and regions including Italy, Turkey, China, and the United States, by providing hospitals and first responders with desperately needed PPEs and medical equipment. In China alone, 366,000 pairs of gloves, 50,000 masks, 20,000 protective goggles, 20,000 testing kits, 7,000 protective suits, 1,000 germicidal lamps, 388 oxygen concentrators, and 5 tons of disinfectant have been sent to more than 300 hospitals throughout Hubei Province during China’s peak of the COVID-19 outbreak. 

In addition to Binance’s commitment, more than 40 other companies in the crypto space have cumulatively pledged $275,000 towards the now-global #CryptoAgainstCOVID initiative, for a net total of $2.7 million in donations to-date. Furthermore, Binance Charity will be piloting a blockchain concept in New York to publicly track the delivery of these goods, in which courier services will be compensated for their services in the form of a token. This way, we can promote transparency to the donation process while furthering the adoption and utility of cryptocurrency.

Growing the Ecosystem, Country by Country

The Quarter Ahead, Including CoinMarketCap, Binance Korea, Binance Smart Chain, and More

Three major events happened that are not included in the first quarter but are worth talking about, especially because they will likely impact the coming quarters and years for Binance.

1. Binance KR. This is the first digital asset exchange fully powered by Binance Cloud, our infrastructure solution for partners to launch digital asset exchanges by leveraging Binance’s technology, security, and liquidity. In five years, I expect Binance Cloud exchanges to overtake Binance.com and contribute the majority of the trading volume.

Binance Cloud is part of our Open Platform initiative, which also includes the Binance Broker Program. For the Broker Program, we recently allowed other exchanges, platforms, and institutions to bring trading services to their users through an application programming interface (API) by leveraging Binance’s liquidity and market depth.

2. CoinMarketCap. I see CoinMarketCap as extremely valuable because they are the landing page of crypto. It’s by far the largest deal we have done so far. CoinMarketCap has more users than any other product in the crypto space. It’s a really good website and we will help grow it further. It’s a very valuable platform, and we intend to keep it that way, and keep them independent. 

We usually spend about a quarter of our profit on investment opportunities every year, though that figure can change from time to time. We want to grow our portfolio of businesses beyond just trading. Our previous investments and acquisitions have resulted in some of our most successful products to date. Binance Futures, the culmination of the work of two teams competing to create the product back in September, is now on top of the crypto futures world. Trust Wallet now has 1 million downloads on Android, with hundreds of thousands more on iOS.

3. BNB Smart Chain. I only found out about the Trust Wallet milestone today and the new whitepaper on BNB Smart Chain just recently. The community behind BNB Chain has continued to surprise me with their growth, and I believe they will do good work on this new chain. I expect BNB Chain 2.0 to roll out soon-ish, though I don’t have any idea when. I do see this as something that will be beneficial to BNB in the coming quarters, probably depending on how many developers will use the BNB Smart Chain and how many people end up using the things they create.

Meanwhile, we are going full steam ahead with our plan to onboard 180 fiat currencies by the end of 2020. We are more than 25% through 2020, and while we’ve managed to add 42 fiat currencies, there are still more than 100 currencies to go. As usual, we’re gonna work hard for that.

No one could have predicted the kind of global situation we are in right now, but we keep our heads down and work hard. I don’t know what the next quarter brings, and I guess at this point, no one does. But I know only two things: I am long on BTC, and I am long on BNB. You decide for yourself.

- CZ 

Updated on July 27, 2022