Binance Review, Month 43: BNB, BSC Ascending

During Binance’s Month 43 (January 15 to February 15, 2021): BNB reaches new heights, BNB Smart Chain emerges as a top blockchain with record-breaking milestones, and more. 

The Big Story: BNB, BSC Ascend to New Heights

Within just over a month, the entire crypto industry went from $1 trillion in total market capitalization to almost $1.7 trillion, with Bitcoin solely accounting for $1 trillion. As for crypto milestones, BTC surpassed $50,000 and hit an all-time high of $56,609.14 from as low as $30,400 in the middle of the month. ETH went from staying barely above $1,000 to breaking past $2,000. Then, BNB went above $50, then $100, $200, and all the way to $300 in a span of three weeks. With this rise, BNB is now the third-biggest cryptocurrency in the world.

Binance began its 43rd month by burning a total of 3,619,888 BNB, then worth $165,791,000. This 14th token burn event is the biggest in terms of both BNB and USD values, fueled by an accelerated burn program that Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) talked about in this article.

Since then, Binance has revealed two new products that will make it easier for more people to buy and use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies:

1. Binance Lite. This new addition to the Binance app features a user-friendly interface for buying and trading crypto with some of the lowest fees. Right now, you can switch between default mode and lite mode on your app.

2. Binance Pay (beta). Announced during the recent Binance Blockchain Week, CZ introduced a new feature, Binance Pay (beta), which allows you to pay and get paid in crypto from your friends and family worldwide. Binance Pay (beta) wallet supports six currencies: BNB, BUSD, BTC, SXP, ETH, and EUR. This feature is currently available to select users, and we intend to roll this out to more people in the coming months.

Then, Binance Launchpad announced its first token sale for the year: SafePal (SFP). This time, the platform introduced a new subscription format that opened up the token sale to even more users. In the days that followed this announcement, BNB rose in value from $50 to as much as $140 in the span of one week.

The next catalyst in the growth of BNB came from BNB Smart Chain (BSC), which has rapidly increased in popularity as an Ethereum-compatible blockchain alternative with faster transactions and lower fees. BSC’s daily transactions are on par with Ethereum’s as of February 8, and then BSC’s lead in that front grew to as much as 246% as of February 19. On that day, BSC processed 3.2 million transactions, compared to 1.3 million transactions on Ethereum. 

In addition, the TVL (total value locked) on BSC’s projects has recently doubled in a span of a week, from $4.69 billion to $10.52 billion. And PancakeSwap, the largest DeFi platform on BSC at the moment, recently surpassed Uniswap in terms of 24-hour trading volumes. This has led to BNB’s best week in the market, elevating from around $130 to as high as $340 and propelling it past Tether (USDT) to take the No. 3 rank in terms of crypto market cap. 

Amid this unprecedented growth, we like to thank everyone in the Binance and BSC communities for your continued support for our crypto ecosystem. We will continue to work hard to deliver more growth for everyone.

In Other News

Week 1 Highlights

- BNB Smart Chain 2021 Roadmap: Vision and Trends. Four months into the launch of BSC, we share our agenda for 2021, including our vision for BSC and some of the dApp (decentralized app) trends that we will support.

- Convert & OTC Portal Now Available on the Binance App. The Convert & OTC Portal is a live request for quotation (RFQ) platform in which you can easily convert over 40 different assets. 

- 10 Ways to Make Money With Crypt on Binance Earn. At the time of writing, $4.2 billion worth of crypto assets currently on Binance Earn with $70 million worth of total rewards distributed in 2020. The active stablecoins volume on Liquid Swap reached $128 million, and over $22 billion in funds are locked in DeFi in Binance as of late 2020.

Week 2 Highlights

- Join the Binance Hackathon: The Future Is Now | Powered by Gitcoin. We welcome developers, builders, and creators to build the next generation of projects for (BSC). The hackathon features $60,000 in cash prizes, an array of bonus prizes, and introductory workshops. 

- Binance Research Releases Global Report on Crypto User Motivations. The first-ever report examines data from over 61,000 crypto users worldwide, shedding light on the motivations, behaviors, and preferences of this growing audience. 

- Binance Launchpool Introduces Litentry. This new project provides a secure vehicle through which users manage their identities, and dApps obtain the real-time credit/reputation of an identity owner across different blockchains.

Week 3 Highlights 

- Binance Introduces USDT-Margined Quarterly Futures. With crypto adoption expected to accelerate, the addition of USDT-margined quarterly futures will give users more choice in their portfolio management and enable more advanced users to employ hedging and trading strategies according to their preferences.

- Binance X Invests in Decentralized Finance Aggregator Furucombo. “Furucombo makes it easy for the layperson to leverage DeFi composability to string together sophisticated transactions.” Said Teck Chia, Head of Binance X.

Week 4 Highlights 

- Post-Show Recap: Everything You Missed During Binance Blockchain Week. Binance brought together thousands of viewers from around the world in one of the year’s biggest blockchain and crypto events. Over a 5-day virtual conference, we heard from founders and visionaries, business mavens, thought leaders, and experts in everything from crypto and finance to business and technology—and beyond. 

- Binance Labs Leads $2.4 Million Investment Round for Plasm Network. Plasm Network is the first investment under Binance Labs’ $10 million fund to support projects in the Polkadot ecosystem. 

Week 5 Highlights 

- Introducing DODO on Binance Launchpool. The 17th project on Binance Launchpool is DODO, an open, accessible, capital-efficient decentralized exchange platform. Users are able to stake their BNB, BETH, and BUSD into separate pools to farm DODO tokens over 14 days, starting February 19.

- CZ on Bloomberg: We’re Just Seeing the Tip of the Iceberg with BTC. Bloomberg interviewed CZ on the latest trends in crypto, including Bitcoin’s momentum and Elon Musk’s comments on crypto such as BTC and Dogecoin.

Updated on July 27, 2022