Binance Q4 Recap

This quarter we will burn 2,528,767 BNB (roughly $32,700,000 USD), up from 2,220,314 BNB last quarter (roughly $30,000,000 USD at the time). Again, some random recap.

The overall market (BTC) remains relatively flat, with a slight drop in price compared to last quarter, but Binance was still able to pull in decent earnings. This is the highest number of BNBs we have burned in a quarter so far. This is a result of the strong support from our community, you, and hard work by the team, including our Angels. Thank you so much!

The fact that the overall market dropped doesn’t make much sense. We have seen $14 billion USD raised from ICOs so far this year, on par with 4x the amount raised in 2017. This alone should boost price. On top of that, we have seen many jurisdictions releasing favorable regulations towards ICOs, exchanges, and cryptocurrency. They changed from “unsure” to “want to attract blockchain businesses”. This is very exciting! Lastly, we have seen a huge uptick in institutional investments in the crypto space, both in number of firms and the size of their buy orders. So, I don’t understand why the price is dropping. I guess markets always overreact, both on the high and the low side.

I also learned a shocking amount of people still don’t understand the concept of “burn”. Simply speaking, if someone destroys 10% of a currency (burn), that achieves the exact financial effect as spreading that 10% proportionally to the other 90% holders (usually called a dividend distribution). Some people seems to be (wrongly) happier with a dividend distribution than a burn, for no logical reason. A dividend distribution has three potential downsides: 1) it costs more in network transfer fees, 2) has more complex legal and tax implications in some jurisdictions, and 3) involves more work. (Note though, buyback without burn is not the same, it is kind of “cheating”. They can/will sell later. It does nothing.)

For completeness, the inverse is also true. People will get angry if we take 10% of funds out of everyone’s account, yet when we print 10% more of a currency (quantitative easing), people don’t complain. Again, they are exactly the same financially.

We have seen some interesting, but flawed, new concepts in the exchange space. The cleverly masked selling of coins through enticing words likes trade-mining, 100% refund on trading fees (using platform tokens), 100% dividend distribution, zero fee listing (but with other requirements), etc. At first glance, I was almost tempted to copy them (which we would shameless do if they are indeed good), but as I learned more, I understood these models are simply scams to sell their coin(s), and not great innovations.

In this quarter, over 20 other exchanges have listed BNB, all without any input or request from Binance. This is a strong testimony to the value of BNB, and the saying “focus on creating value, and listing will come”.

Speaking of listing, it is still the number one request I get, but I am very much not involved in listing now. I often only find out we are listing a coin after the public announcement. Pitching projects and talking to me about listing really won’t do much, other than wasting both of our time. I won’t be able to make a judgement on a project with just a conversation, and I won’t have more time to spend on it after that. We have a good team and process for it now, and I believe it is the best in the industry, based on results. The only place to request listing is the web form. Counter to the misconception, we don’t ask for a high listing fee. Projects propose what they are comfortable paying to us, including 0. Free market takes care of the rest. Many projects who don’t get listed (yet) mistakenly think it’s the fee that’s the problem, while not realizing most of the time, it’s the project. Work on your project!

If you would like to pitch a project for pre-ico investment, please find Binance Labs. Labs have made a number of key investments which we think are important for the ecosystem. We have also acquired a few key projects/teams that I am very happy about. More news coming soon. And something I didn’t plan before, we now also own part of a bank, a creative one at that.

We also ramped up our other initiatives, including Binance Charity Foundation, Binance Info, Binance Research, Binance Academy, Binance fiat exchanges, SAFU and of course Binance Chain (DEX). I won’t go into each of these in detail here, but you will see more news coming out of them in the next quarter or so.

At the core, we still maintain a deep focus on our core product, the exchange. We have made about 200 upgrades to our exchange system in the last 90 days. Most of them were done without any interruption to trading, but a few major ones did. I was relieved with the level of support and understanding we got from our community during our downtime. Funds are SAFU, thank you again!

We have made significant improvements to our customer support, but it is still far from perfect, we still have much room to grow. We will continue to improve in this area.

Binance has a team of 260 at the moment, which is small compared to other exchanges. We work in geographically dispersed locations. If you are mobile, good at what you do, and is passionate about crypto, we are hiring. At conferences, I love to talk to people who are interested in joining Binance. Basically, I much prefer instead of pitching your project, pitch yourself.

On a lighter note, we had our first team retreat. No shareholders, media or any other party were invited (sorry), just the Binance team, which included the active/senior Binance Angels. We had a great two days together, on a tropical island. No, we didn’t buy the island, or yacht. We like to rent, share economy. We are also aggressively expanding our Binance Angels team.

There are many exciting things brewing for the next quarter and beyond. I am tempted to make more pre-announcements of announcements, but will hold off until things are done. As always, I thank you for your unwavering support in Binance, and look forward to building a higher freedom economy together.

Cheers,

CZ, Binance CEO