Binance has vowed to burn the entire 80 million BNB, worth $2.4 billion, originally allocated for the team in what it calls a continued commitment to growing binance coin and the cryptocurrency exchange.
Billion-Dollar Coin Burn
As apart of its quarterly coin burn, cryptocurrency exchange Binance published an update detailing the destruction of over 800,000 BNB on July 12, worth $24 million. The latest coin burn was the eighth completed destruction by the exchange, as apart of its whitepaper commitment to burning 100 million coins.
$23M USD equivalent of $BNB, burned from the Binance Team allocations. The only time we “spent” the Team BNB allocation. I will talk a bit more about that in my live AMA, in about 10 min or so. https://t.co/KQhqf3FJmN
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) July 12, 2019
The current total supply for BNB is 189 million tokens, which Binance wants to eventually reduce to 100 million. According to the cryptocurrency exchange’s whitepaper 40% off the total supply (80 million BNB) was originally allocated as a reward for the Binance team.
However, the exchange is now pledging to burn their entire allocation. Binance reports they are “giving up” on their BNB reward, and will contribute their individual coins to the quarterly burn as a way to “double down on our mission to exchange the world and spread the freedom of money.”
Binance completes the eighth quarterly coin burn for BNB | Source: Binance
Binance Team Doubling Down
The press release explains that Binance will continue to burn BNB based upon quarterly trading volumes, but that the allocated coins will be destroyed first as the total supply is reduced to 100 million over the coming years.
“We are now committing to building the Binance ecosystem without getting any BNB from the initial allocation. The team will burn their own tokens first. All US$2,400,000,000 of it!”
The update reiterates that Binance will not keep a single token from the original whitepaper amount, and that all bnb held by team members has been earned or purchased independently.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, explained his motivation,
“This shows that the Binance team is not money-driven. We are here on a mission. Let’s work together to increase the freedom of money.”
Binance reports that it will contiue to be the largest holder in BNB, as the exchange collects the majority of its revenue in the native token. In addition, staff members are paid in binance coin, contributing to the growing trend among exchanges to pay employees with crypto.
Featured image by Marco Verch, Flicr, CC by 2.0
