In less than two days, our team and global community will celebrate Binance's 7th anniversary, my first year running this incredible organization. By traditional standards, a seven-year-old company is nascent, often an aspiring startup; By crypto industry standards, being present for seven years, almost all the time in a leadership position, means having survived and prospered during several eras in the development of what is perhaps the most dynamic sector in history, becoming a seasoned veteran.

As we turn seven years old, we combine elements of both: a curious, agile, growth-oriented startup mindset, and the wisdom and tenacity of a battle-tested organization that has weathered multiple crises and learned many important lessons the hard way. With over 210 million users – and counting – trusting us to support them in exploring the crypto space, this formula appears to be the right one to drive global progress towards financial freedom and inclusion. This is where we find ourselves today.

Ecosystem State

From our first anniversary to the seventh we now celebrate, and all those to come, some fundamental things about Binance do not change: our focus on users as the most important factor driving our decisions; our intense work culture and ownership mentality; and our commitment to continuous innovation in the name of tangibly improving people's lives.

Binance's last year has been typical in that it saw both difficult challenges and exciting moments of success. From turning the page on our past issues and change in leadership to seeing signs of renewed user confidence in strong entries and booming new signups, we stayed strong and never stopped building.

A key achievement this year was surpassing the threshold of 200 million registered users globally. While some of them are already familiar with digital assets, many are new, trusting Binance to open the doors to the Web3 world for the first time, each marking a step towards widespread adoption of digital assets. We warmly welcome these newcomers and are committed to doing everything we can to make them feel comfortable and secure as they explore the future of finance with us.

More users means more funds in Binance custody, and earlier this year, the value of our users' funds exceeded $100 billion for the first time. As always, user funds are SAFU, and are transparently held at a 1:1 ratio.

Infrastructure for Widespread Adoption

The infrastructure is ready to support the exploration of experienced and new users, along with a wide range of products and services to meet any of your Web3 and crypto related needs. Today, Binance supports 541 carefully selected digital assets and 2,632 trading pairs. Our systems are robust and prepared to handle large volumes of user activity. The all-time high queries per second (QPS) on Binance - a metric that captures the number of requests users send to our system and get a response in one second of time - stands at a whopping 2 .58 million. This value shows that Binance is able to seamlessly process a very significant load when users need it most.

To facilitate cryptocurrency adoption and financial inclusion, we continually expand the coverage and scope of products designed to ensure broader access to cryptocurrencies and provide essential financial services.

Our “Simple Earn” product line allows users to grow their crypto holdings across 392 different assets, with over 8 million users putting their cryptocurrencies to work through Binance Earn. Another pillar of adoption is payments, and today, more than 24 million people globally use Binance Pay to securely and efficiently transfer value within and across borders.

One of the main drivers of the widespread adoption of digital assets during the current market cycle has been the increase in institutional participation. Attracted by Binance's unrivaled liquidity and market depth, as well as products and solutions tailored to the demanding requirements of professional investors, these organizations flocked to the Binance ecosystem this year: between January and June 2024, we saw an increase in more than 36% in the records by the institutional ones.

Regarding another pillar of adoption, crypto education, we have reached 43.6 million students who visited Binance Academy to better understand the world of blockchain and digital assets and interact with it in a more thoughtful and responsible way.

Security and Compliance

During our seventh year, our already substantial focus on regulatory compliance was further strengthened. Realizing the key role of robust compliance practices in the new phase of maturation of the crypto industry, we continue to attract top-level talent, refine our systems and technology, and pursue authorizations and registrations in close cooperation with numerous national authorities and agencies. regulatory. We now have licenses and registrations in 18 jurisdictions, more than any other centralized crypto exchange.

Strengthening collaborative security in the digital finance space also remained one of the key areas of Binance's focus. Our Law Enforcement Training Program delivered dozens of online and in-person training sessions, helping to strengthen the capacity of law enforcement agencies around the world to combat illicit activity related to or facilitated for digital assets. Between June 2023 and May 2024, Binance teams processed some 62,800 requests from law enforcement agencies around the world, bringing the total number to 173,800. Each request is instrumental in investigating and prosecuting criminal cases, finding perpetrators, and recovering money from victims.

To protect Binance users from potential security breaches and other extreme situations, we kept the value of our SAFU fund above $1 billion, and will continue to do so in the future. Earlier this year, we transferred all SAFU assets to USDC, a trustworthy and transparent stablecoin, further improving the trustworthiness of the fund and ensuring it remains stable at $1 billion.

What the Future Holds

As we enter our eighth year serving crypto users, we are firmly positioned to lead the digital asset sector into the next stage of its development. Some of the forces that will shape it are already well understood, as the respective market and industry trends are in full swing.

The institutionalization of cryptocurrencies, combined with greater regulatory clarity, will attract more large-scale investors and more capital to the space. The retail side of the equation will continue to be equally important, as the early majority of adopters will continue to expand, attracting more first-time users from new geographies and demographics. They will require a more intuitive user experience, accessible crypto knowledge and customer support, and constant innovation – all things Binance is built to offer.

With the trust and support of our global community, we are confident that our first seven years of hard work have laid a solid foundation for even greater success on the path to expanding financial freedom and inclusion. We have only just begun.