Binance coin (BNB) is the exchange token of the Binance crypto exchange. It was launched originally on the Ethereum blockchain but later migrated to the Binance Smart Chain, now called BNB Chain.

Holders of BNB with Binance accounts can access discounted fees on the exchange. That means demand for the token is linked to demand for the exchange’s services. Therefore, buying BNB can be seen as a bet on the success of the exchange, in a similar way to buying a share in a company, except that owning the token comes with no ownership rights in the exchange.

BNB price

As of May 2022, BNB’s all-time highest price was $686.31, recorded on May 10, 2021, according to CoinGecko. The rally was likely to do with the surging popularity of decentralized applications (dapps), including decentralized finance (DeFi), on the Binance Smart Chain.

Binance Smart Chain (later rebranded BNB Chain) is a layer 1 network, meaning other applications can be built on top of it. That makes it a competitor to the Ethereum network. It offers faster transactions and cheaper transaction speeds than Ethereum, but it is more centralized.

The success of the BNB Chain contributes to rallies in the price of BNB because the token is needed to pay transaction fees on the chain. Anyone wanting to do business on the chain needs BNB tokens. In addition to its core centralized exchange, Binance has also built a decentralized exchange on the BNB Chain.

BNB spent much of 2021-22 as the third or fourth largest cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization. As of May 2022, it is the fourth largest after bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH) and tether (USDT).

Binance originally created the tokens in order to raise capital through an initial coin offering (ICO). The coins were sold in the first week of the ICO in July 2017 at a price of 2,700 BNB for 1 ETH. The offering included 100 million BNB, meaning at the top end it could have raised around 37,000 ETH, which would have been worth nearly $10 million at the time.

The founding team and angel investors held another 100 million BNB between them. Binance proposed in its original whitepaper to spend 20% of its profits every quarter buying and removing BNB from circulation, until the volume was brought down to 100 million. As of May 2022, the volume in circulation is around 168 million BNB, according to CoinGecko.

The process of removing tokens from circulation or “burning” tends to support the price of a token, all else being equal.

BNB tokens are burned in “real time,” meaning all the time. A certain portion of transaction fees is burned whenever a block is validated. At the time of writing, the total burned in this way was just over 76,600 BNB. However, most BNB burning is done on a regular quarterly basis, with the amount calculated according to a formula based on the BNB price and the total number of blocks so far validated in the chain. In the first quarterly burn of 2022, more than 1.8 million BNB were burned.

How does BNB work?

BNB Chain works on a proof-of-stake authority (PoSA) consensus mechanism, meaning its validators are limited to a small number of the largest stakers in the system on any given day. Currently, that number is 21. Ethereum 2.0’s proof-of-stake mechanism only requires each participant to stake 32 ETH, meaning a much larger number of stakers are involved in the validation process. BNB Chain’s method is how the system manages to be cheaper and faster than Ethereum but does so in exchange for greater centralization.

The original value proposition of the BNB token was that users of the crypto exchange Binance could access discounts on spot, margin and futures trading fees by paying using the tokens. The discounts vary between 10-25%. This remains true, but BNB tokens are now in demand for staking on the BNB Chain and as a governance token for the chain, allowing holders to participate in some of the project’s decision-making.

An unusual feature of BNB is that users can sometimes reclaim lost tokens, with caveats. In eligible cases, users who lose tokens may be able to put them towards the official “burn” count and get reimbursed with new BNB. Eligible cases include honest mistakes concerning tokens worth more than $1,000 but less than the planned “burn” volume.

Key events and management

Binance is managed by Changpeng Zhao, known by his initials CZ in the crypto community.

CZ was a serial tech entrepreneur before founding Binance in 2017. Prior to that, he had headed the team responsible for Bloomberg’s futures trading platform in New York. Chief Technology Officer Roger Wang had worked at Nomura, Japan’s largest investment bank, and Morgan Stanley. The rest of the management team boasts similar high-level fintech experience.

One of the most important events in the BNB timeline was its move off the Ethereum blockchain onto the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), later incorporated into the BNB Chain. The BSC was launched in April 2019. When users migrated their BNB tokens to the new chain, their old tokens were destroyed, and the same number was created on the new chain.