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Binance, the leading cryptocurrency exchange in terms of volume, has completed the 16th quarterly burn of its native token, Binance Coin (BNB/USD). The exchange unveiled this news through an official announcement on July 18, noting that it burned 1,296,728 BNB worth approximately $393,673,653.52 (£286,931,010.74). Reportedly, the exchange also unlocked the remaining 16 million BNB and moved the funds to a team address.
According to the announcement, the Binance team has never used or sold a single token from its allocation. Instead, the team has been dedicating the funds to the burn program. The publication further disclosed that this burn involved the actual destruction of 1,291,565 BNB.
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Binance then got rid of the remaining 5,163 BNB through the Pioneer Burn Program, an initiative that helps the BNB holders that lost their funds through honestly mistaken transactions to smart contracts. After investigating and determining that the transactions meet the program’s policies, it refunds the funds and deducts the tokens from the amount of BNB scheduled for quarterly burns.
From the amount of BNB destroyed, it is safe to conclude that Binance made approximately $2 billion (£1.46 billion) in profits in Q2 2021. This is because the project’s whitepaper indicates that the exchange promised to burn 20% of its profits in every quarter.
BNB continues performing poorly
Binance’s largest burn came in April when the exchange destroyed approximately $600 million (£437.56 million) worth of BNB following the crypto market’s bullish performance in Q1. Due to the effect of this massive burn, BNB surged significantly at the time.
Despite the 16th quarterly burn being the second-largest burn that Binance has had to date, its effect has not been reflected in BNB’s price. At the time of writing, BNB is changing hands at $297.55 (£216.94) after plunging 2.41% over the past 24 hours. The coin is currently the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by capitalization with a market cap of $50,108,854,469 (£36,542,633,754.34).
While this poor performance is partly because of the overall bearish sentiment in the crypto market, Binance has been battling the effects of several regulators clamping down on its operations. For instance, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) prohibited the exchange from running any regulated operations in the country. Apart from the FCA, Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FCA) warned that Binance is not registered to conduct business in Japan.