Binance Coin (BNB)

Following the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies, many companies are delving into the opportunity to cash in by rolling out their own crypto-tokens that can be used within their own ecosystem. The use of these tokens provides incentives like fee-cutting, free benefits, and loyalty rewards, and this attracts more and more users to the platform. Similarly, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance.com was perhaps the first one to roll out their coin, by the name of Binance Coin.

Utility crypto-tokens are made to be used within the company’s ecosystem. The Binance Coin is a loyalty-based utility token that the users if Binance.com can use. The token offers them a significant reduction in fees on sell/buy orders of up to 50%. The success of the coin is thus directly related to the performance of the Binance exchange (Binance Academy, 2018).

Binance Coin is relative to Binance.com's performance, which is one of the best and largest among its kind. It is the biggest exchange and has rightfully earned quite the reputation among cryptocurrency users and investors. There are many crypto-coins listed and being exchanged on the Binance exchange. The platform maintains its repute and integrity by filtering out any coin that shows negative behaviour and is not suitable for the cryptocurrency community. Some of the indicators that become the reason for the fall out is lack of commitment of the team, low level of code and network quality, public acceptance and evidence of unethical business conduct. This is how Binance scrutinizes all cryptocurrencies that it offers (Binance, 2019 March 27).

The Binance Coin was formed under the leadership of Binance.com. It is an ERC-20 token and was proposed and launched by the founder of Binance.com exchange, Changpeng Zhao. Changpeng has a history of working for crypto-currency related projects. He is the co-founder of Blockchain.com (formerly known as Blockchain.info) and has also served as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of OKCoin, a platform for spot trading between fiat and digital assets (Ambler, 2018).

The team behind Binance coin is, in essence, the same as of Binance Company. The focal person is Changpeng Zhao (CZ), who founded Binance in 2017 and is responsible for its success (Forbes, 2018).

The code development is currently being directed towards the creation of a decentralized exchange (DEX). Binance is also working hard to enhance the Binance Chain and its genesis block (the first block on their Blockchain) was mined on April 18, 2019. Binance wants to get ahead of other Blockchain companies and capture the market to have a heads up. The plan is to use BNB coin on the decentralized exchange but still wants to have a say in what altcoins can be listed and traded on the exchange (Binance, 2019 March 23).

In another major development, Binance redesigned their website recently in June 2019. It offers an enhanced interface and an easy-to-use version of the website (Binance, 2019 July 13).

The cryptocurrency exchange is one of the largest and widely used, and it continues to gain momentum with each passing day. As things are going, it is pertinent the Binance will remain one of the biggest crypto-exchanges and will resume attracting businesses and users in the future. The company is also striving to maintain its integrity and trust within the user community. The recent act of creating the ‘Safu’ fund (Secure Asset Fund for Users), which is meant to be used in any occurrence of asset theft on the platform, has been very well received by the general public.

Binance, being a pioneer-company of cryptocurrencies, is maintaining its ambition to work towards the betterment of the cryptocurrency community. It is working on many different projects, including the development of a decentralized exchange (DEX).

Binance is already seen as a mark of excellence in the cryptocurrency field. It is an embodiment of all ambitious ideas and has maintained its position as a leader in the market. The potential of the Binance coin is directly linked with the platform’s performance and it can increase after the coin gets used in many different projects that are in the company’s pipeline.

Lately, different crypto platforms have suffered cyber-attacks, and Binance.com is no exception. On March 7, 2018, there was an attempt by hackers to steal money and other digital assets from user accounts. The method they used is referred to as the ‘phishing’ method, where they created a web page similar to Binance’s official webpage and tried to lure users into entering their confidential user account information into their database. However, the news broke out soon and Binance’s security caught it early enough to prevent any major loss (Xie, 2018).

The latest news about Binance is that they have released their own stable coin by the name of BGBR on 23 March 2019 (Binance, 2019 July 27). This was after the Tether scandal unfolded. Tether Foundation could not verify their fiat currency reserves to back the amount of Tether Tokens, and this had received a backlash from the public. Amidst the crises, Binance CEO had announced to roll out their own stable coin (Crypto Traders News, 2019).

The Binance team is active on social media platforms. Even the CEO of Binance, tweets frequently which help in raising the positive sentiment towards the cryptocurrency exchange. In order to maintain and strengthen company-community interaction, Binance has also started competitions, which is intended to allow its users and members of the community to participate and get rewarded for their efforts.

Binance is not new to the crypto-world and has maintained its position as one of the most popular crypto-exchanges. It is for sure, a huge force in the market. Not only in regards to its exchange, but its Binance Academy is looked up to as a centre of knowledge. Another initiative by the name of Binance Labs is researching future development possibilities about the Blockchain technology.

In 2018, it partnered with Trust Wallet and acquired the company. Trust Wallet was a wallet app used to store cryptocurrencies. It also partnered with Certik in the same year, which is a Blockchain and smart contract verification platform. This enhanced the security of the listed tokens on Binance. Travelbybit.com was another venture Binance jumped into, through which the users could spend their BNB tokens to make transactions on the website.

In late 2018, Binance announced their collaboration with MoedaSeeds.com. This announcement was intended to enable investors to contribute their BNB tokens to their loan programs. The year 2019 saw the unveiling of Binance and IdentityMindGlobal.com partnership which was made to improve data protection through KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) programs.

If we talk about only the Binance ecosystem, no substitute for Binance Coin has been created for now that could offer reduced transaction fees. However, on other exchanges, Binance Coin cannot be used. Some exchanges have their own utility tokens that can be considered substitutes to the Binance Coin, for example Huobi Token.