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Binance Coin (BNB) is a cryptocurrency issued by leading exchange Binance that also serves as the native token of the BNB Chain, an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible network that supports smart contracts and decentralized applications.
Binance was created in July 2017, with BNB initially being issued through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) on the Ethereum blockchain, as an ERC-20 token before the launch of BNB Chain.
At the time of the ICO, 100,000,000 BNB tokens, equivalent to 50% of the cryptocurrency’s total supply, were sold at a price of 1 ETH for 2,700 BNB, or 1 BTC for 20,000 BNB. While BNB’s total supply is 200,000,000 coins, Binance regularly burns tokens, in a bid to reduce BNB’s circulating supply to 100,000,000.
As mentioned above, Binance created the BNB token and distributed part of its supply via an ICO back in 2017. Binance’s founding team and angel investors kept the remaining BNB tokens, with some having suggested these weren’t touched to this day.
BNB’s initial supply was distributed as follows, according to its whitepaper:
Binance raised $15 million at launch through its ICO, and used part of the funds to upgrade the Binance platform and exchange system. Half of the proceeds were allocated toward Binance branding and marketing, while another portion was kept as a reserve.
The exchange’s founding team included its CEO Changpeng Zhao, Roger Want as CTO, James Hofbauer as Chief Architect, Paul Jankunas as VP of Engineering, Allan Yan as Product Director, Sunny Li as Operations Director, and more.
Investors and advisors to Binance include Roger Ver, CEO of Bitcoin.com; Da Hongfei, founder of AntShares; Zhao Dong, one of the largest over-the-counter crypto brokers in China; Yang Linke, co-founder of BTCChina, and many more.
BNB’s use cases have been expanding over time. It was initially used for BNB users to receive a discount on trading fees on the Binance exchange, and these use cases quickly expanded to other benefits on the exchange.
Nowadays, BNB can be used within the Binance ecosystem to pay for hotel and flight expenses, to book car rides, buy virtual gifts, non-fungible tokens, or pay for everyday items using the Binance Card.
On the BNB Chain, BNB can be staked to help secure the network and earn yield, and used to pay for transaction fees to send funds or interact with smart contracts within the network. The token can be used as collateral for loans, or used to pay for investments in several assets on different platforms.
As the native asset of a smart contract-powered network, BNB’s use cases are likely going to keep growing over time.
Try our free Binance Coin (BNB) portfolio tracker if you want to efficiently keep track of your BNB and other coin/token investments.