Binance Year 2 Highlights: Evolution in Progress

We look back at the second year of Binance, particularly the highlights of such a frenetic year. Here’s a statement from Binance CEO CZ (Changpeng Zhao) on this occasion.

Fellow Binancians, 

We celebrated our 2 year anniversary on July 14. It was a decentralized celebration, with teams around the world holding dinners wherever they are. I thought there’s something poetic about it since this is the year our community fully launched BNB Chain and Binance DEX. 

The Binance community has been the driving force for our new decentralized platforms and probably just about every milestone we reached and every challenge we conquered. As we continue to strive toward increasing the freedom of money across the globe, we dedicate our progress and evolution to all Binancians.
We plan to continue keeping our heads down and BUIDLing, especially now that we’re offering new services on Binance.com, Binance DEX is gaining momentum, and we are accomplishing a lot of things through all of the parts of the Binance ecosystem. 

Thank you very much for your support. Let us know how we can continue to improve; you can reach me on Twitter @cz_binance.

- CZ

Overview
Binance saw rapid growth during its first year, quickly becoming the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world just 165 days after launch. It’s during this first year that Binance also started to lay the groundwork for an entire blockchain ecosystem, including its own blockchain and fiat-to-crypto channels.

In many aspects, Year 2 of the Binance journey is about maturity. Amid the bear market of 2018, the Binance team worked on building stronger foundations and closer communities. This has led to a more comprehensive blockchain ecosystem, with new major features for the Binance Exchange, as well as a new decentralized movement in Binance Chain and Binance DEX. 

(as of July 15, 2019, 3 PM GMT)

The right combination of growth and maturity has led to unprecedented heights for Binance. BNB has recently reached No. 7 in the cryptocurrency rankings, up by 11 spots this year, with all-time highs reached against Bitcoin (0.00478884 BTC per BNB on April 20) and the US dollar ($39.30 on June 22) along the way. 

Binance is now a $4 billion blockchain ecosystem, with endeavours spanning across blockchain platforms, cryptocurrency exchanges, blockchain startup incubators and launchpads, research and education websites, charity portals, and more. 

Here are some of the important details and highlights from Binance’s eventful Year 2:

Exchanges: More Maturity, More Options

Binance started Year 2 with 143 total cryptocurrencies listed across 370 trading pairs. Since then, the number of cryptocurrencies on Binance has grown to 160 tokens across 523 trading pairs. The addition of 153 trading pairs was driven by two new updates: the transition of ETH Markets into ALTS Markets to list more cryptocurrencies as quote currencies, and the creation of the USDⓈ Markets to accommodate more stablecoins. 

In addition, before the end of Year 2, Binance exchange started venturing into more solutions. Margin trading officially launched a few days ago, with futures trading and one-cancels-the-other (OCO) features in the pipeline, among others. 

Just as remarkable is the growth of community-led Binance DEX, which was able to become one of the top 100 exchanges less than 3 months after its launch. Now with 44 cryptocurrencies trading across 50 pairs, and with notable innovations such as Bitcoin-pegged tokens on Binance Chain and a Community Listing Program that encourages trading activity and free listings, Binance DEX is poised to make waves in decentralized trading.

Year 2 was also when Binance started turning its vision of launching fiat-to-crypto gateways into reality. 

As of January 2019, Binance now also offers the option to buy Bitcoin with credit card (you can also buy XRP, ETH, LTC and BCH), or buy crypto with US Dollars or Euro through TUSD or PAX stablecoins.

BNB: One of the Most Useful Cryptocurrencies in the World

This year, increasing the utility of BNB has been a primary focus for the Binance team. We began documenting BNB use cases in October 2018, when we identified 27 use cases for the native token of the Binance ecosystem, with a majority of these use cases existing since our first year of operations.

In just nine months, we have expanded the number of use cases from 27 to 120. This means an average of 10 additional use cases per month, We attribute a huge part of this expansion to the overwhelming community support for Binance DEX and Binance Chain

Another major feature of BNB is the quarterly commitment to burning tokens. This has continued unabated in Year 2, with a total of 4,905,579 BNB burned, worth about US$65,638,000. But perhaps the more notable development for the burning mechanism is the recent commitment from the Binance team to forgo of the team BNB allocations and subject all US$2,400,000,000 worth of BNB to quarterly burning.

Ecosystem: Perfect 10

Year 2 started with the Binance ecosystem consisting of Exchange, Labs, Launchpad, and Info. Since then, we have created new divisions to offer a more holistic ecosystem that advances the blockchain cause across the world.

Trust Wallet (acquired July 2018) - a decentralized mobile wallet app and the official wallet of Binance. Trust Wallet supports most of the top-20 cryptocurrencies in the world, including several blockchains. Through the Binance DEX integration on Trust Wallet, users can trade crypto wallet-to-wallet directly through the app, while staying in full control of digital assets. 

Binance Academy (launched in beta August 2018) - a crypto-education platform that provides articles, videos, and modules to facilitate self-learning for everyone. The website is available in 16 languages and comes with features that enable easy learning experiences.

Binance Charity (launched October 2018) - a blockchain-powered donation platform and not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of blockchain-enabled philanthropy towards achieving global sustainable development.

Fiat Gateways (launched October 2018) - a series of platforms that allow for trading cryptocurrencies using fiat currencies. Binance has established joint ventures with leading global partners to create fiat-to-cryptocurrency trading platforms in Uganda, Jersey, Singapore and Australia, with more platforms to follow across the globe.

Binance Research (launched November 2018) - a market analysis division that provides professional, data-driven insights and reports for investors in the crypto space. Binance Research produces institutional-grade research reports on specific digital assets and market themes.

Binance Chain (launched April 2019) - a community-driven blockchain software system with developers and contributors from all over the world. Binance DEX is the decentralized exchange feature developed on top of the Binance Chain blockchain.

Community: Binance is Truly Global

All the growth and innovation that we achieved as a team in Year 2 would not have been possible if not for the Binance community, perhaps the most supportive blockchain community in the world. We thank the community profusely for your trust in us. Here are some figures that capture how big our community has grown.

1,009,790 followers on Twitter.

110,923 followers on Facebook across multiple local communities.

60,313 followers on Instagram.

11,188 subscribers on YouTube.

108 Binance Angels, volunteers who have been very instrumental in advancing Binance’s community initiatives, from meetups and conferences to online communications.

8,500+ attendees to Binance-led meetups and events during Year 2.

94 meetups across 6 continents.

62 cities where Binance has held meetups during Year 2.

27 countries where Binance hosted meetups.

25 languages supported in official Binance communities on Telegram.

2 languages added to the Binance website: Polish and Indonesian.

Please follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to stay up-to-date with our latest announcements. Join our official Binance Telegram group to participate in discussions with our traders, community, staff, and Angels.