Written by Richard Teng, Binance CEO
In less than two days, our team and the global crypto community will celebrate Binance’s seventh anniversary, which will also be my first anniversary as CEO of Binance. By most standards, a company that is seven years old is still an aspiring startup in its early stages of growth, but in the crypto industry, a company that has been in business for seven years and has almost always maintained its leadership position during this period is already an experienced industry veteran, surviving and thriving through various periods of development in this industry that has been changing most rapidly in history.
Binance, which is about to celebrate its seventh anniversary, has both of the above characteristics: it maintains the curiosity, agility, and growth mindset of a startup, and has the wisdom and resilience of a veteran who has endured various crises and learned important experiences in the difficult process. More than 210 million global users, and still growing, have given us great trust and are willing to embark on their crypto asset journey with us, becoming a force for global financial freedom and inclusion. This is where we are today.
Current Status of Binance Ecosystem Development
Whether it is our first anniversary, second anniversary, upcoming seventh anniversary or all the upcoming anniversaries, Binance has always stayed true to its original aspiration: "user-centricity" is the most important consideration in all our decisions; a hardcore work culture and ownership thinking, with the goal of continuous innovation to truly improve people's lives.
The past year has been nothing new for Binance: a mixture of difficult challenges and exciting moments of success. As we move on from past problems and leadership changes, we’ve seen signs of renewed user confidence in strong inflows and soaring new registrations, and we remain strong and never stop building the industry.
A key milestone this year was reaching the 200 million global registered user threshold in early June. Many of these users were already familiar with digital assets, but many were new to the industry who trusted Binance to open the door for their first foray into the world of Web3. Each of these new users is one step closer to bringing digital assets mainstream. We warmly welcome these new users and promise to do everything we can to make them feel comfortable and secure as they explore the future of finance with us.
More users means more funds under custody on Binance, and earlier this year, the amount of user funds under custody on our platform exceeded $100 billion for the first time. Our user funds are always kept 1:1 in a secure and transparent manner.
Infrastructure that drives crypto assets into the mainstream
To better support new and existing users in exploring the world of crypto assets, we provide a range of infrastructure, products and services to meet any user's needs related to Web3 and crypto assets. Currently, Binance supports 541 carefully selected digital assets and 2,632 crypto asset trading pairs. Our powerful system is ready to handle a large amount of user activity. The historical highest number of queries per second (QPS) on the Binance platform - a number that can be used to measure the number of requests sent by users to our system and responded to per second, is as high as 2.58 million. This number shows that Binance can smoothly handle very large loads when users need it most.
To promote the popularization of crypto assets and financial inclusion, we continue to expand our product coverage, ensure accessibility to a wider range of crypto fields, and provide important financial services.
Our Simple Earn product line allows users to add their crypto assets to 392 crypto assets, and has attracted more than 8 million users to experience Binance Financial Services. Payment is another pillar for crypto assets to enter the mainstream. Currently, more than 24 million people around the world use Binance Payment for secure and efficient domestic or cross-border transfers.
In the current market cycle, another key force driving digital assets into the mainstream is more institutional participation. Binance's unparalleled liquidity and market depth, as well as products and solutions tailored to the stringent requirements of professional investors, have attracted a large number of institutions to join the Binance ecosystem this year: between January and June 2024, we witnessed an increase of more than 36% in institutional user registrations.
Cryptocurrency education is another important foundation for the popularization of cryptocurrencies. The total number of students visiting Binance Academy has reached 43.6 million. Through learning, users can better understand the world of blockchain and digital assets, and invest in cryptocurrencies in a more thoughtful and responsible way.
Security and Compliance
Over the past seven years, our commitment to regulatory compliance has been significant and will only get stronger. We know that strong compliance practices will play a key role in the new stage of maturity of the crypto asset industry. We continue to recruit the best talent, constantly hone our systems and technologies, and work closely with governments and regulators in many countries to obtain operating authorizations and registrations. Currently, we have obtained licenses and registrations in 18 jurisdictions, ranking first among all centralized crypto asset trading platforms.
Another area where Binance focuses is strengthening security cooperation in the digital financial sector. Our law enforcement training program contributes to the capacity building of global law enforcement agencies to combat illegal activities related to digital assets through multiple online and offline courses. Between June 2023 and May 2024, the Binance team processed 62,800 law enforcement requests, bringing the total number of requests processed to 173,800. Each request processed plays an important role in the investigation and prosecution of criminal cases, finding criminals, and recovering funds from victims.
To protect Binance users from potential security risks and other extreme situations, we have maintained the SAFU fund size at over $1 billion and will continue to do so. Earlier this year, we converted all SAFU funds into USDC, a more trusted and transparent stablecoin, to further enhance the reliability of the fund pool and ensure its value remains stable at $1 billion.
Looking ahead
As we enter our eighth year of serving crypto asset users, we will unwaveringly lead the digital asset industry into the next stage of development. As market and industry trends emerge, some of the forces that shape it are already well known.
The institutionalization of crypto assets, coupled with clearer regulation, will attract more large-scale investors and capital into the space. At the same time, the importance of retail users will not change, as the group of major early adopters will continue to expand, attracting more new users from new regions and populations. They need a more intuitive user experience, easy-to-understand crypto asset knowledge, user support, and continuous innovation - Binance is born for this.
With the trust and support of the global community, we believe that the hard work of the past seven years has laid a solid foundation for greater success, and the road to financial freedom and inclusiveness will become wider and wider. And all this has just begun.
