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The largest centralized exchanges send quarterly a portion of their revenue to buy back and destroy the share of native tokens in order to keep them scarce. Here's what the latest token burn announcements can tell about an exchange's revenue.
Huobi exchange burns 827,226 HT in Q1, 2023
According to the announcement shared by Huobi, a top-notch crypto exchange, 827,226 Huobi Tokens (HT) were burned in Q1, 2023. In total, during the entire lifetime of the token burn program, the exchange has destroyed almost 300 million HT. These tokens are sent to a "burn" address and excluded from circulation for good.
Huobi, owned by Justin Sun, announced the Q1 HT report, burning 827,226 HTs, or about $3.31m. Huobi used 20% of the platform revenue for burning, so the platform revenue in Q1 is only about $16.55m. https://t.co/z1W70LnRlY
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) April 17, 2023
As such, at current prices, this burn event is equal to $3.3 million. As mentioned by crypto journalist Colin Wu, these metrics show that the net revenue of Huobi exchange in Q1, 2023, was about $16.55 million.
Given the previous statements of Huobi owner Justin Sun, the exchange might only be responsible for 11% of the revenue of his cryptocurrency conglomerate.
As covered by U.Today previously, Tron (TRX) founder and Huobi owner Justin Sun dismissed rumors about a potential fundraising campaign.
Since Q4, 2022, Justin Sun has also been a HT whale: he acquired a massive stake in the token amid its pump last October.
Burn season comes to CEX segment
With the latest token burn round, Huobi Token's (HT) circulating supply dropped to 161,362,774 HT while, in total, there are 200 million HT in existence.
Alongside with Huobi, some other crypto exchange majors held their own token burn events. For instance, MEXC Global destroyed 2.1 million MX tokens. Its program is more aggressive than that of Huobi: it spends 40% of revenue on the buy back initiative. As such, MEXC Global made $11.7 million in Q1, 2023.
Binance (BNB), the largest cryptocurrency exchange, shared the statistics of its 23th token burn on April 14, 2023. It destroyed over 2 million BNB Coins (BNB).
#Binance completes the 23rd Quarterly #BNB Burn!
— Binance (@binance) April 14, 2023
🔥 2.02m #BNB has been burned 🔥 pic.twitter.com/sQVli4dR1m
In actual prices, that is equal to $676 million.