Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao said on April 18 that the crypto exchange team was allocated 40% of the 200 million BNB minted in the 2017 initial coin offering (ICO). In his Twitter post, Zhao said that the exchange team would eventually burn all the allocated BNB tokens.
This amount is nearly 80 million BNB which is worth nearly $37 billion, and it will be burned instead of selling at a profit.
#Binance team had an allocation of 40% of the total supply of #BNB from the ICO days, which is worth just over $37 billion dollars at today's (dropped) prices. We have not sold a single #BNB so far, and never intend to. We will burn it all. More info: https://t.co/6YM7O7vqDZ
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) April 18, 2021
Binance crypto exchange completed its ICO of 100 million BNB on July 21, 2017. All BNB tokens were created before the initial coin offering and were then sold within 20 days.
At the time of writing, BNB was trading at $576 cementing it in the third spot of the market cap listing.
The burning announcement by Binance comes after the exchange launched a blockchain network. This new network is designed to compete with Ethereum for a share of the budding decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. Binance said:
“It’s used on multiple DeFi platforms built on BSC that provide financial payments solutions. With the growth of BSC, more people are using BNB, and the more utility it has, the more value it gains.”
Interestingly, the decentralized finance industry has been surging in the past several months, and the sector might boost BNB tokens further.