In less than two days, our team and global community will celebrate Binance's seventh anniversary, with me first in charge of this incredible organization. By traditional standards, a seven-year-old company is a nascent, often still aspiring startup; By crypto industry standards, being around for seven years, almost all the time in a leadership position, means having survived and thrived through several eras in the development of perhaps the fastest-moving sector in crypto. history, becoming a seasoned veteran.

In less than two days, our team and global community will celebrate Binance's seventh anniversary, with me first in charge of this incredible organization. By traditional standards, a seven-year-old company is a nascent, often still aspiring startup; By crypto industry standards, being around for seven years, almost all of the time in a leadership position, means having survived and thrived through several eras in the development of perhaps the fastest-moving sector in crypto. history, becoming a seasoned veteran.

As we turn seven years old, we combine the 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 their crypto journey, 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 status

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

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

A key achievement this year was surpassing the threshold of 200 million registered users worldwide. 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 of them marks 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 mean 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 transparently held at a 1:1 ratio.

Infrastructure for mass adoption

The infrastructure is there to support the exploration of new and experienced users, along with a wide range of products and services that seek to satisfy 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 massive volumes of activity. The all-time high Queries Per Second (QPS) across all Binance trading products – a metric that captures the number of requests users send to our system and get a response in a unit of time – stands at an impressive 2.58. millions. This value shows that the platform is capable of smoothly processing 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 increase their cryptocurrency 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 around the world use Binance Pay to securely and efficiently transfer value within and across borders.

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

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

Security and compliance

Throughout our seventh year, our focus on regulatory compliance, already very substantial, became even stronger. Realizing the key role of robust compliance practices in the new phase of maturation of the crypto industry, we continue to attract top talent, refine our systems and technology, and pursue authorizations and registrations in close cooperation with numerous national authorities and agencies. regulators. 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 increase the capacity of law enforcement agencies around the world to combat illicit activity related to or facilitated by digital assets . Between June 2023 and May 2024, Binance teams processed some 62,800 law enforcement requests, 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 keep 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 one billion.

What the future holds

As we enter our eighth year of serving cryptocurrency 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 drive more large-scale investors and more capital into 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. They will require a more intuitive user experience, accessible cryptocurrency knowledge and customer support, and constant innovation – all things Binance is designed 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.

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