The complete guide · Fact-checked 13 October 2026

What is BNB?

BNB began in 2017 as a discount token for a brand-new exchange. Nine years later it is the fourth-largest cryptocurrency, the fuel of a blockchain that produces two blocks a second, and a coin whose supply shrinks every quarter. This guide unpacks all of it in plain English: the technology, the money, the people, and the parts its critics would rather you read first.

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60 min full read
20 chapters
5 interactive explainers
13 quiz questions

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Chapter 1 of 20

BNB right now

Figures refresh from CoinGecko when you load the page. If the feed is unavailable you will see our last checked snapshot instead.

BNB / USD

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Market value—

24h volume—

Supply133.2Mafter July 2026 burn

All-time high$1,369.9913 Oct 2025 · —

Burned so far66.8M33% of the original 200M

Target supply100Mwhen burning stops

Prices are informational, can be delayed and are not advice. Supply and burn figures are from BNB Chain's July 2026 burn announcement.

Chapter 2 of 20

BNB in 60 seconds

Short on time? These eight points are the whole story in miniature.

BNB is a cryptocurrency created by Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, in July 2017.
It has two homes. On Binance it cuts trading fees and unlocks token launches. On BNB Chain it pays for every transaction.
BNB Chain is a family of three networks: BNB Smart Chain for apps, opBNB for ultra-cheap activity and Greenfield for data storage.
It is fast and cheap by design. A new block every 0.45 seconds, and a typical fee of a fraction of a US cent.
That speed has a price: only 45 elected validators run the main chain, far fewer than Ethereum or Bitcoin.
The supply shrinks. 200 million coins were created; about 133 million remain; burning continues until 100 million are left.
Its fortunes are tied to Binance, including the company's $4.3 billion US settlement in 2023 and its founder's prison term and 2025 pardon.
Wall Street now holds it too. The first US spot BNB ETF launched in May 2026, and listed companies keep BNB in their treasuries.

What BNB does well

Very low fees and quick confirmation
Works with Ethereum tools and wallets
Huge retail user base through Binance
Transparent, rules-based supply reduction

What to be careful about

Heavy dependence on one company
A small validator set
A long regulatory record
Lots of scams and low-quality tokens on the chain

Your learning path

Seven badges, one complete picture

· saved on this device only

BasicsLive data, 60 seconds, origins
MechanicTimeline and how it works
EconomistTokenomics, price and ETFs
InsiderPeople, ecosystem, regulation
NavigatorRoadmap, compare, wallets, buy
ScepticRisks and myths
GraduateGlossary, FAQ, sources + 10 on the quiz

Chapter 3 of 20

Where BNB came from

How an exchange loyalty token became a top-five cryptocurrency with its own blockchains.

In the summer of 2017, a software engineer named Changpeng Zhao, known to everyone as CZ, wanted to build a cryptocurrency exchange that was faster than anything on the market. He had a trading-systems background, a small team and a co-founder, Yi He, who knew how to reach Chinese-speaking traders. What he did not have was money. So Binance did what many crypto start-ups did that year: it sold a token.

The token was called Binance Coin, ticker BNB. Two hundred million were created as ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum. Half were offered to the public at roughly 15 US cents each, the founding team kept 40% and early backers received 10%. The sale raised about $15 million. The exchange opened eleven days later.

The pitch was simple. Pay your trading fees in BNB and get a discount. Every quarter, Binance would use part of its profits to destroy some BNB, until half of the supply was gone. The more people traded on Binance, the more useful, and scarcer, the token would become.

Binance grew at a speed nobody expected. Within six months it was the largest exchange in the world by trading volume. BNB went along for the ride.

Four eras of BNB

2017

The ERC-20 token

A loyalty token living on Ethereum. Useful for one thing: cheaper trades on Binance.

2019

Binance Chain

BNB moves to its own blockchain, built around a fast decentralised exchange. It could trade, but it could not run smart contracts.

2020

Binance Smart Chain

A second, parallel chain launches on 1 September 2020. It copies Ethereum's design so that Ethereum apps can move over, but uses a small validator set to stay cheap.

2022 →

BNB Chain

The network drops the Binance name, adds a layer 2 and a storage chain, retires the 2019 chain and keeps cutting block times.

Why a second chain?

By 2020 Ethereum was congested. A single token swap could cost $50 or more. Binance's answer was Binance Smart Chain (BSC): take Ethereum's open-source software, replace thousands of anonymous validators with 21 known ones, and set fees at a few cents. Purists objected that this was barely decentralised. Users did not care. By early 2021 BSC was processing more daily transactions than Ethereum, led by a pancake-themed exchange called PancakeSwap.

Dropping the Binance name

In February 2022 the project rebranded. Binance Smart Chain became BNB Smart Chain, the two chains together became BNB Chain, and BNB was said to stand for "Build and Build". The change was partly marketing and partly legal positioning: regulators were circling Binance, and the chain wanted to be seen as a public network rather than a company product.

The Fusion: retiring the first chain

Running two chains joined by a bridge turned out to be a weakness. In October 2022 an attacker exploited that bridge and created 2 million BNB out of nothing. The long-term fix was to merge. Over 2024 the "BNB Chain Fusion" moved staking, governance and assets onto BNB Smart Chain in three stages, and on 3 December 2024 the original Beacon Chain was switched off for good. Old-format BEP-2 tokens no longer exist as a live network.

Deep dive: what the 2017 whitepaper actually promised

The original plan said Binance would use 20% of its profits each quarter to buy back and burn BNB until 100 million were destroyed. Over time the wording changed from "profits" to a figure based on trading volume, and in 2019 Binance said the team would give up its own 80 million allocation by counting it towards future burns. In December 2021 the whole approach was replaced by the formula-driven Auto-Burn described in the tokenomics chapter. The destination, 100 million BNB, has never changed.

Deep dive: why BSC took off in 2021

Three things lined up. Ethereum fees were painfully high. BSC was compatible with MetaMask and other Ethereum tools, so switching took minutes. And Binance made it effortless for its millions of exchange customers to withdraw straight to the new chain. The result was a wave of copy-and-paste DeFi apps, some excellent and many fraudulent. That mixed reputation, cheap and popular but full of scams, has followed the chain ever since.

Chapter 4 of 20

The BNB timeline, 2017 to 2026

Nine years of launches, upgrades, market milestones and courtrooms. Filter by theme.

2017
Jul 2017Launch
Binance and BNB are born
Changpeng Zhao and Yi He found Binance. An initial coin offering sells BNB at roughly $0.15 a coin and raises about $15 million. Total supply is fixed at 200 million BNB, issued as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. The exchange opens days later.
Oct 2017Market
First quarterly burn
Binance destroys its first batch of BNB, starting a quarterly tradition that has continued without a break ever since.
2018
Jul 2018Launch
Binance buys Trust Wallet
The exchange acquires the mobile self-custody wallet that later becomes one of the most-used ways to hold BNB.
2019
Apr 2019Launch
Binance Chain mainnet
BNB leaves Ethereum and becomes the native coin of its own blockchain, Binance Chain (later called BNB Beacon Chain), built for fast trading on a decentralised exchange.
May 2019Legal / security
Exchange hack: 7,000 BTC
Hackers take about 7,000 bitcoin (around $40 million at the time) from a Binance hot wallet. Withdrawals pause for a week and customers are made whole from an emergency fund.
2020
Sep 2020Launch
Binance Smart Chain launches
On 1 September 2020 a second chain goes live alongside the first. It is compatible with Ethereum apps and uses Proof of Staked Authority. PancakeSwap arrives the same month.
2021
May 2021Market
DeFi boom peak near $690
Cheap fees pull a wave of users from Ethereum. BNB climbs from under $40 at the start of the year to roughly $690 in May before the market turns.
Nov–Dec 2021Upgrade
BEP-95 and the Auto-Burn
The Bruno upgrade starts burning a slice of every block's gas fees in real time. In December Binance replaces its discretionary quarterly burn with a public formula, the Auto-Burn.
2022
Feb 2022Launch
Rebrand to BNB Chain
Binance Smart Chain becomes BNB Smart Chain and the family of chains is renamed BNB Chain. BNB is said to stand for "Build and Build".
Oct 2022Legal / security
Bridge exploit mints 2 million BNB
An attacker forges proofs on the bridge between the two BNB chains and creates about 2 million BNB (roughly $570 million). Validators halt the chain; around $100 million had already left and was not recovered.
Nov 2022Market
FTX collapses
CZ announces Binance will sell its FTT holdings, a run on rival exchange FTX follows, and a brief rescue offer is withdrawn within a day.
2023
Mar–Jun 2023Legal / security
CFTC and SEC sue
US regulators file civil cases against Binance and CZ. The SEC's June complaint also argues that BNB was sold as an unregistered security.
Sep–Oct 2023Launch
opBNB and Greenfield go live
opBNB, a layer 2 for very cheap transactions, opens to the public, followed by BNB Greenfield, a data-storage network. One BNB now works in three places.
Nov 2023Legal / security
$4.3 billion US settlement
Binance pleads guilty to anti-money-laundering and sanctions violations and agrees to pay $4.3 billion. CZ pleads guilty to one charge, pays $50 million and resigns as CEO. Richard Teng takes over.
2024
Apr–Sep 2024People
CZ sentenced and jailed
On 30 April 2024 a Seattle court sentences CZ to four months. He serves his time in California and is released on 27 September 2024.
Dec 2024Upgrade
Beacon Chain switched off
The BNB Chain Fusion finishes. The original 2019 chain stops on 3 December 2024 and everything, including staking and governance, now lives on BNB Smart Chain.
2025
Mar 2025Market
MGX invests $2 billion in Binance
Abu Dhabi's MGX takes a minority stake in Binance, the exchange's first institutional investment. It is paid in the USD1 stablecoin.
Apr–Jun 2025Upgrade
Lorentz and Maxwell
Two hard forks cut BNB Smart Chain's block time from 3 seconds to 1.5, then to about 0.75.
May 2025Legal / security
SEC case dismissed
On 29 May 2025 the SEC and Binance jointly ask the court to dismiss the 2023 lawsuit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.
Jul–Aug 2025Market
BNB treasury companies appear
Listed firms including Nano Labs and CEA Industries start holding BNB as a reserve asset. CEA raises $500 million in a deal backed by YZi Labs.
18 Sep 2025Market
BNB crosses $1,000
BNB trades above $1,000 for the first time.
Oct 2025Upgrade
Gas floor cut to 0.05 gwei
Validators lower the minimum gas price again. An average transaction costs about half a US cent, and on 5 October the chain processes a record 31 million transactions in a day.
10–11 Oct 2025Market
Record liquidation event
A tariff shock triggers more than $19 billion of forced liquidations across crypto. Three assets briefly lose their pegs on Binance, which later pays about $283 million in compensation and launches a $400 million support programme.
13 Oct 2025Market
All-time high of about $1,370
Days after the crash, BNB sets its record high of $1,369.99 (CoinGecko data).
23 Oct 2025People
CZ is pardoned
President Trump grants CZ a pardon. Critics in Congress call it a conflict of interest; the White House says the prosecution was overreach.
3 Dec 2025People
Yi He becomes co-CEO
Binance names co-founder Yi He co-CEO alongside Richard Teng.
Dec 2025Legal / security
Abu Dhabi licence
Binance receives authorisation from Abu Dhabi's ADGM regulator to run its global platform from there, starting January 2026. Later that month a hacked Trust Wallet browser extension costs users about $7 million, which Trust Wallet pledges to repay.
2026
Jan 2026Upgrade
Fermi: 0.45-second blocks
The Fermi hard fork cuts block time on BNB Smart Chain to 450 milliseconds. opBNB's Fourier upgrade halves its block time to 250 milliseconds.
Feb–May 2026Legal / security
Iran allegations
US newspapers report that Binance staff flagged large flows to Iran-linked entities, and that the Justice Department is investigating. Binance denies the reports and sues the Wall Street Journal for defamation.
Apr 2026People
CZ publishes a memoir
Freedom of Money goes on sale. CZ says his royalties go to his education non-profit, Giggle Academy.
28 May 2026Market
First US spot BNB ETF
VanEck's VBNB begins trading on Nasdaq. It holds BNB directly and does not stake it at launch.
8 Jul 2026Upgrade
A fourth chain is announced
BNB Chain's second-half roadmap reveals a new layer 1 built for trading and AI agents, with a testnet targeted for the end of 2026 and mainnet in early 2027.
15 Jul 2026Market
36th quarterly burn
1,615,828 BNB (about $932 million) is destroyed, leaving a total supply of 133,166,128 BNB.
25 Aug 2026Upgrade
Pasteur hard fork
Tighter validator and bridge security rules, plus a faster way for block builders to submit blocks. Block time stays at 0.45 seconds.
Oct 2026Market
Where things stand
BNB trades in the mid-$700s, with a market value near $100 billion. The 37th quarterly burn is expected around the middle of the month.

Chapter 5 of 20

How BNB Chain works

The engineering, without the jargon: who makes the blocks, why it is so quick and what each of the three networks is for.

Every blockchain has to answer one question: who gets to add the next page to the shared ledger? Bitcoin's answer is whoever burns the most electricity. Ethereum's is a lottery among hundreds of thousands of people who have locked up coins. BNB Smart Chain's answer is narrower. A small group of elected, staked operators take turns in a fixed rotation. The system is called Proof of Staked Authority, or PoSA.

Stake

Anyone holding BNB can delegate it to a validator. Operators must put up at least 2,000 BNB of their own.

Elect

Once a day, the 45 validators with the most stake are chosen. The top 21 are "Cabinet"; the next 24 are "Candidates".

Produce

A working group of 21 takes turns making blocks, one every 0.45 seconds.

Finalise

Validators vote on recent blocks. Once two-thirds agree, a block cannot be undone. This takes about a second.

Interactive 1

Elect a validator set

Forty-five validators are ranked by stake. Each epoch, 21 of them do the work: 18 drawn from the Cabinet and 3 from the Candidates. Press the button to run an epoch and watch who gets picked.

Cabinet (top 21) Candidate (22–45) Producing blocks this epoch

Epoch 0: press the button to choose the first working group.

Simplified illustration of the selection rule described in BNB Chain's documentation. Stake sizes are invented for the demo.

Why it is fast: the sub-second block upgrades

For most of its life BNB Smart Chain made a block every three seconds. In 2025 the developers set out to make it feel instant. Four hard forks in ten months did it.

BNB Smart Chain speed upgrades
Upgrade	When	Block time after	What else it did
Pascal	March 2025	3 s	Smart-wallet features such as gas sponsorship and batched transactions
Lorentz	April 2025	1.5 s	First halving of block time
Maxwell	June 2025	0.75 s	Second halving; faster validator messaging
Fermi	January 2026	0.45 s	Finality in roughly one second
Osaka/Mendel	First half of 2026	0.45 s	Fewer chain reorganisations; Ethereum-compatibility updates
Pasteur	25 August 2026	0.45 s	Stricter validator key and bridge rules; faster block submission by builders

Interactive 2

Feel the difference in block time

Pick an era and watch blocks arrive at real speed for ten seconds.

Blocks produced: 0

By mid-2026 BNB Chain reported in-memory finality of about 650 milliseconds and benchmark throughput of roughly 5,200 transactions per second, up from about 2,800 in January. Those are the team's own test figures. Real-world throughput depends on what the transactions are doing.

One BNB, three places

"BNB Chain" is not one blockchain. It is three networks that share a coin. Tap each one to see what it is for.

Interactive 3

One BNB, three places

Choose a network, or pick a job below and see where it belongs.

Where would you do this?

What a transaction costs

Fees on BNB Smart Chain work the same way as on Ethereum: the amount of computing work (gas) multiplied by a gas price, paid in the chain's coin. What differs is the price. Validators have cut the minimum gas price from 3 gwei in early 2024 to 1 gwei, then 0.1 gwei in May 2025 and 0.05 gwei in October 2025. An average transaction now costs around half a US cent. Use the calculator to compare.

Interactive 4

Fee comparison calculator

Pick an action. Adjust any input to match today's conditions. Results are estimates.

Network	Gas price (gwei)	Coin price (USD)	Estimated fee
BNB Smart Chain
opBNB (layer 2)		uses BNB price
Ethereum

And on the exchange: the BNB fee discount

Trade size (USD) Standard fee (%) BNB discount (%)

Defaults: BSC's 0.05 gwei floor; an example opBNB price (layer 2 fees also include a small data cost that this ignores); an example Ethereum gas price, which moves constantly. Gas amounts per action are typical values and vary by app. Binance's standard spot fee and BNB discount are the long-standing published rates; check the current fee schedule, which varies by region and VIP tier.

Deep dive: how staking and slashing work

Staking has lived directly on BNB Smart Chain since the Fusion. You choose a validator and delegate BNB to it; your coins stay yours but are locked. Rewards come from transaction fees rather than newly created coins, because no new BNB is issued. That makes yields modest and variable. If you want out, you wait through an unbonding period before the coins are spendable.

Validators that sign two conflicting blocks, or that go offline during their turn, can lose part of their own bond and be removed from the set. Delegators' coins are not confiscated in that case, though rewards can pause. Liquid-staking tokens such as slisBNB let you stake and still use a receipt token in DeFi, at the cost of extra smart-contract risk.

Deep dive: builders, MEV and why validators do not build most blocks

On BNB Smart Chain, as on Ethereum, specialised firms called builders assemble the most profitable ordering of transactions and hand finished blocks to validators. This creates the temptation to "sandwich" ordinary users' trades. BNB Chain says coordinated action by validators, wallets and builders cut malicious MEV by about 95% during 2025. The Pasteur fork in August 2026 changed how builders submit blocks so that more transactions fit in busy periods; in testing, throughput rose by about 88%.

Deep dive: opBNB and Greenfield in more detail

opBNB is an optimistic rollup built with the OP Stack, the same toolkit behind several Ethereum layer 2s. It bundles transactions, posts the data to BNB Smart Chain and assumes they are valid unless challenged. Its Fourier upgrade on 7 January 2026 cut block time from 500 to 250 milliseconds. It suits games, social apps and anything that needs thousands of tiny actions.

BNB Greenfield launched in 2023 as a storage network. Users pay BNB to storage providers to keep files, and can set on-chain rules about who may read them. It is the least used of the three, and BNB Chain's 2026 roadmaps say little about it; treat it as a niche product for now.

In July 2026 BNB Chain announced a fourth network, a new layer 1 for high-speed trading and AI agents. See the roadmap.

Chapter 6 of 20

Tokenomics: a coin designed to shrink

No inflation, no mining, no new coins. BNB's economics are about one thing: a supply that falls on a schedule set by a formula.

66.8M burned33.2M still to burn100M final supply

0200M created in 2017

Mechanism 1

Quarterly Auto-Burn

Four times a year the BNB Chain Foundation destroys a batch of BNB. The size is set by a public formula, not by anyone's discretion. This is where almost all the burning happens.

Mechanism 2

Real-time gas burn (BEP-95)

A fixed share of the gas fees in every block is burned automatically. It is small: roughly 291,000 BNB in total since 2021. But it never stops, even after the 100 million target is reached.

No mechanism 3

No new issuance

Validators are paid from fees, not from freshly minted coins. Unlike Ethereum or Solana, there is no inflation to offset the burns.

The Auto-Burn formula

B = N × 1000P + K

B is the number of BNB burned that quarter.
N is the number of blocks produced in the quarter, counted as if blocks still took three seconds. (Since Fermi, real blocks are multiplied by 3/20 so that faster blocks do not inflate the burn.)
P is BNB's average price in US dollars over the quarter.
K is a constant, set at 1,000.

Read it carefully and one feature stands out: price is on the bottom. When BNB is cheap, more coins are burned. When it is expensive, fewer are. The formula leans against the market rather than with it.

Interactive 5

Burn mechanism simulator

Set a BNB price and see what the formula would burn in one quarter, and how long the road to 100 million would be if that price held. Illustrative only: real prices move, and this is not a forecast.

Average BNB price $750 Days in the quarter 91 Blocks actually produced 100%

Real blocks (0.45 s)—

N (3-second equivalent)—

Quarterly burn—

Quarters to reach 100M—

Starting point: 133,166,128 BNB after the July 2026 burn. Check: at about $577 the formula gives about 1.66 million BNB; the real burn that quarter was 1,615,828. The small gap comes from the exact price average and block count. The simulator ignores the BEP-95 gas burn.

Recent burns

Burn	Date	BNB destroyed	Value at the time	Supply afterwards
35th	15 April 2026	1,569,307	about $1 billion	134,786,917
36th	15 July 2026	1,615,828	about $932 million	133,166,128
37th	expected mid-October 2026	Not yet announced when this page was checked

What BNB is used for

Gas

Every transaction on BNB Smart Chain and opBNB, and every storage payment on Greenfield, is paid in BNB.

Exchange fee discounts

Pay Binance trading fees in BNB for a reduced rate. Larger BNB balances also count towards VIP tiers.

Launchpool and HODLer Airdrops

Binance rewards BNB holders with tokens from newly listed projects, either by locking BNB in Launchpool or simply by holding it in certain products.

Staking

Delegate BNB to a validator to earn a share of fees and a vote in governance.

DeFi collateral

Borrow against BNB on lending markets such as Venus, or mint stablecoins against it on Lista.

Payments

Binance Pay and a number of merchants and travel sites accept BNB directly.

Deep dive: who owns the BNB?

BNB's ownership is concentrated, and nobody outside Binance knows the exact figures. A 2024 Forbes estimate, repeated by Cointelegraph in 2025, suggested CZ personally holds around 94 million BNB, which would be well over half of the supply. Binance has not confirmed this number. Binance itself also holds BNB, as do YZi Labs, treasury companies and ETFs. What is beyond dispute is that a very small number of parties hold a very large share, which matters for governance and for how freely the coin really trades. CZ has said publicly that his own holdings are mainly Bitcoin and BNB.

Deep dive: what happens when supply reaches 100 million?

The quarterly Auto-Burn is designed to stop once 100 million BNB remain. The BEP-95 gas burn is designed to continue. So BNB would stay very slightly deflationary for as long as the chain is used. At recent prices the simulator above puts the target several years away. A sustained fall in price would bring it closer; a sustained rise would push it further out.

Chapter 7 of 20

The people and organisations behind BNB

BNB cannot be understood without the people who built Binance. This chapter profiles the founder in depth, then the two executives who run the company now, then the organisations around them.

Founder profile

Changpeng Zhao, "CZ"

Co-founder and former CEO of Binance · largest shareholder · born 1977

Born1977, Jiangsu, China

RaisedVancouver, Canada

CitizenshipCanada and UAE

Lives inAbu Dhabi

Ran Binance2017 to Nov 2023

NowInvestor, adviser, author

From Jiangsu to Vancouver

Changpeng Zhao was born in 1977 in Jiangsu province, China, to parents who were both teachers. In 1989 the family emigrated to Vancouver. As a teenager he worked at McDonald's and at a petrol station to help with the household bills. He went on to study computer science at McGill University in Montreal.

A trading-systems engineer

His career started in the plumbing of financial markets. He interned in Tokyo at a subcontractor to the Tokyo Stock Exchange, then spent four years at Bloomberg Tradebook writing futures-trading software. In 2005 he moved to Shanghai and founded Fusion Systems, which built high-speed trading systems for brokers. The skills he would later need, matching orders quickly and keeping systems up under load, came from this decade.

Discovering Bitcoin

He first heard about Bitcoin in 2013, reportedly during a poker game. He was convinced quickly. He joined Blockchain.info as its third team member and head of development, then became chief technology officer at the exchange OKCoin, where he worked with Yi He. In 2015 he sold his Shanghai apartment to buy bitcoin, a story he has told many times since.

Building Binance

Binance launched in July 2017 on the back of the BNB token sale. Within about six months it was the world's largest crypto exchange by volume, a position it has held ever since. Its formula was a fast matching engine, hundreds of listed coins, low fees and support in many languages. Just as important was its habit of moving: when China banned crypto exchanges in September 2017 the company relocated, first to Japan, then to Malta, and for years it insisted it had no headquarters at all.

That rootlessness was a selling point to users and a provocation to regulators. By 2021 authorities in Britain, Japan, Germany, the United States and elsewhere had issued warnings or opened inquiries.

The fall of FTX

In November 2022 CZ announced on Twitter that Binance would sell its holdings of FTT, the token of rival exchange FTX. Customers rushed to withdraw from FTX, which could not meet the demand. Binance signed a non-binding offer to buy it, looked at the books and walked away a day later. FTX filed for bankruptcy within the week. CZ was briefly seen as the industry's last man standing. FTX's estate later sued Binance and CZ to recover about $1.8 billion from an earlier share buy-back.

The US case and the guilty plea

American authorities had been investigating Binance for years. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued in March 2023 and the Securities and Exchange Commission in June. On 21 November 2023 the criminal case ended in a settlement. Binance pleaded guilty to breaking anti-money-laundering, money-transmitting and sanctions laws and agreed to pay $4.3 billion, one of the largest corporate penalties in US history. CZ personally pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering programme, agreed to pay $50 million and resigned as chief executive.

The case was not about stealing customer money, and prosecutors did not allege fraud. It was about what Binance had failed to do: check who its customers were, report suspicious activity and block users from sanctioned countries, while serving Americans without a licence.

Prison

On 30 April 2024 a federal judge in Seattle sentenced CZ to four months, far less than the three years prosecutors had asked for. He served the sentence in California and was released on 27 September 2024. He has since described the experience as frightening but also as a period of reflection.

The pardon

On 23 October 2025 President Donald Trump pardoned him. The White House said the previous administration had prosecuted him as part of a "war on crypto" and noted there were no fraud allegations or identifiable victims. Critics, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, pointed to Binance's business links with World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture co-founded by the Trump family, and called the pardon corrupt. Asked about it on television a week later, the president said he did not know who Zhao was. CZ thanked him and said he would help make America a centre for crypto.

What followed

The pardon removed the conviction. It did not put CZ back in the chief executive's chair. Richard Teng had said the plea agreement barred CZ from managing Binance for life, and whether the pardon changes that has not been tested publicly. As of October 2026 CZ has not returned to any management role. When Yi He was promoted to co-CEO in December 2025, he congratulated her and suggested she should have had the job from the start.

What he does instead:

YZi Labs. The former Binance Labs was renamed in January 2025 and now operates as a family office investing CZ's and Yi He's capital, much of it in BNB Chain projects. It incubated the trading platform Aster and backed several BNB treasury companies.
Giggle Academy. A non-profit he started in 2024 to build free, game-like basic education for children without access to school.
Advising governments. In April 2025 he became a strategic adviser to the Pakistan Crypto Council, and that spring he began advising Kyrgyzstan on blockchain policy, including suggesting it start a national crypto reserve with Bitcoin and BNB.
Writing. His memoir, Freedom of Money, went on sale in April 2026. He says all author royalties go to Giggle Academy.
Speaking for BNB. With millions of followers, his posts move BNB Chain tokens. He told the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026 that the pardon had lifted a psychological burden.

How to weigh him

Supporters see an immigrant engineer who built the most-used product in crypto, kept customer funds safe through several market crashes and accepted punishment for compliance failures. Critics see a founder who grew fast by ignoring rules that competitors followed, and who still holds enormous influence over a supposedly decentralised network. Both descriptions are supported by the record. Forbes estimated his fortune at about $111 billion in April 2026, most of it his Binance stake and BNB; he has said he intends to give away the great majority of it.

Co-CEO

Richard Teng

A career regulator turned exchange boss. Teng spent 13 years at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, was chief regulatory officer of the Singapore Exchange and then ran the financial regulator of Abu Dhabi Global Market, where he wrote one of the world's first rulebooks for crypto firms. He joined Binance in 2021 and replaced CZ as chief executive in November 2023, with a brief to make peace with regulators.

Under him Binance accepted two US-appointed monitors, took a $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi's MGX and won authorisation to run its global platform from Abu Dhabi. He has also been the company's public defender, calling the October 2025 crash "a crypto event, not a Binance event" in a Bloomberg interview.

Co-founder and co-CEO

Yi He

Yi He was a television presenter before she joined the exchange OKCoin, where she hired CZ in 2014. She co-founded Binance with him in 2017 and has run marketing, customer service and, for a time, the venture arm. Inside the company she has long been regarded as its most powerful executive after CZ.

On 3 December 2025 Richard Teng announced her promotion to co-CEO at an event in Dubai. She and CZ are also partners in private life and have children together, which is one reason observers say CZ's influence on Binance did not end with his resignation.

The organisations

Binance

The exchange. A private company with more than 300 million registered users, it created BNB and remains its biggest source of demand. No new BNB is issued to it.

BNB Chain core team and Foundation

The developers who write the software and the foundation that carries out the quarterly burn. Formally separate from the exchange, in practice closely aligned with it.

Validators

The 45 elected operators of BNB Smart Chain. They vote on upgrades and gas prices. Several are run by, or closely associated with, companies in the Binance orbit.

YZi Labs

CZ's and Yi He's investment firm, formerly Binance Labs. A major funder of BNB Chain start-ups and of BNB treasury companies.

Binance.US

A separate, much smaller exchange for American customers, operated by BAM Trading Services.

Trust Wallet

The self-custody wallet Binance bought in 2018. It operates under its own brand.

MGX

An Abu Dhabi state-linked technology investor that bought a minority stake in Binance for $2 billion in March 2025, paying in the USD1 stablecoin.

Monitors

Under the 2023 settlement, a monitor reporting to the Justice Department (three years) and another reporting to the Treasury's FinCEN (five years) oversee Binance's compliance.

Chapter 8 of 20

The ecosystem: who actually uses it

A chain is only as useful as what runs on it. Here is what people do on BNB Chain, from pancakes to US Treasury bills.

Unique addresses700M+end of 2025, per BNB Chain

Record day31M tx5 October 2025

Stablecoins~$14B peakdoubled during 2025

Tokenised stocks & ETFs$1B+autumn 2026, Token Terminal data

DEX

PancakeSwap

The chain's flagship exchange since September 2020 and still its busiest app. Swaps, liquidity pools and its own CAKE token. It has since expanded to other chains.

Lending

Venus

The longest-running money market on BNB Chain. Deposit assets to earn interest or borrow against them. It has survived several bad-debt incidents, a reminder that lending protocols carry real risk.

Liquid staking and stablecoin

Lista DAO

Stake BNB and receive slisBNB, a token that keeps earning rewards while you use it elsewhere. Lista also issues lisUSD, a stablecoin borrowed against crypto collateral.

Perpetual futures

Aster

A decentralised derivatives exchange incubated by YZi Labs and promoted by CZ. Its token launched in September 2025 and for stretches its reported volume rivalled Hyperliquid's. Analysts have questioned how much of that volume was driven by reward campaigns.

Stablecoins

USDT, USDC and FDUSD

Dollar tokens are the chain's lifeblood. Cheap fees make BNB Smart Chain one of the main networks for moving USDT, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Stablecoin

USD1

The dollar token of World Liberty Financial, the venture co-founded by the Trump family. BNB Chain held about 37% of its supply, roughly $1.8 billion, in June 2026. Binance lists it widely and MGX used it to pay for its Binance stake. US lawmakers have asked questions about those links.

Tokenised funds

BUIDL, BENJI, VBILL and USYC

Tokenised money-market and Treasury funds from BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, VanEck and Circle are issued on BNB Chain among other networks. The chain's real-world-asset total passed $1.8 billion by the end of 2025.

Tokenised shares

Stocks and ETFs on-chain

By autumn 2026 BNB Chain was reported to be the first network with more than $1 billion of tokenised stocks and ETFs, ahead of Ethereum and Solana in that niche.

Launchpad

Four.meme and the memecoin waves

Four.meme lets anyone launch a token in a minute. It powered bursts of speculation in 2025, including one in February after CZ revealed his dog's name and another in October. A handful of traders made fortunes; most tokens went to zero. Treat this corner as gambling.

Discovery

Binance Wallet and Alpha

The wallet inside the Binance app, plus its "Alpha" list of early tokens, sends exchange users on-chain with a few taps. It has become one of the largest sources of BNB Chain activity.

AI agents

BNB Agent SDK

Tools released in 2026 for software agents that hold wallets and pay for services on-chain. Early days, but a declared priority for the core team.

Payments

Binance Pay and merchants

BNB and stablecoins on the chain are accepted by travel sites, payment processors and merchants, particularly in emerging markets.

Deep dive: who actually uses BNB Chain?

The typical user is not a Wall Street fund. It is a retail trader, often outside the US and Europe, who arrived through the Binance app and wants low fees. In 2025 swaps made up more than half of all transactions. That gives the chain enormous reach, and it also explains why it attracts so many get-rich-quick tokens. The institutional side, tokenised funds and treasury companies, is newer and growing from a small base.

Chapter 9 of 20

Price history, ETFs and treasury companies

What the price has done, how traditional investors now get exposure, and the companies that put BNB on their balance sheets. History only: no forecasts.

BNB price milestones
When	Roughly	What was happening
July 2017	$0.15	ICO price
January 2021	under $40	Just before the Binance Smart Chain boom
May 2021	about $690	Peak of the DeFi rush; then a 60%+ fall within weeks
Mid-2022	about $200	Crypto bear market after the Terra collapse
18 September 2025	$1,000	First trade above four figures
13 October 2025	$1,369.99	All-time high (CoinGecko), days after the record liquidation event
First half of 2026	$550–$660	Market-wide downturn; BNB down about a third for the year by June
12 October 2026	about $745	Market value near $100 billion; fourth-largest cryptocurrency

Early prices are approximate. Past performance says nothing reliable about the future.

BNB ETFs

Trading

VanEck BNB ETF (VBNB)

The first US fund to hold BNB directly began trading on Nasdaq on 28 May 2026. Its coins are held in cold storage by Anchorage Digital Bank and the sponsor fee is 0.39%. VanEck removed staking from its plans in late 2025, so the fund does not earn staking rewards at launch.

Filed

Grayscale BNB ETF (GBNB)

Grayscale filed in January 2026 and submitted a third amended prospectus on 3 June 2026, naming Nasdaq as the venue and BitGo as custodian, again with no staking at the start. We could not confirm that it had begun trading when this page was checked.

Outside the US, exchange-traded BNB products have been listed on European exchanges for years. An ETF gives price exposure through an ordinary brokerage account. It does not give you BNB you can use on-chain, and you pay an annual fee.

BNB treasury companies

In 2025 a number of small listed companies copied the strategy made famous with Bitcoin: raise money from shareholders and use it to buy a cryptocurrency. Several chose BNB.

Company	What it did	Latest verified position
CEA Industries (Nasdaq: BNC)	Raised $500 million in August 2025 in a deal backed by YZi Labs, and calls itself the largest corporate holder of BNB.	515,544 BNB, valued at about $302 million on 31 July 2026
Nano Labs (Nasdaq: NA)	A Chinese chip designer that bought 74,315 BNB in July 2025 and announced an ambition to hold 5–10% of the supply.	Current holdings not verified
B Strategy	Announced plans in August 2025 for a $1 billion BNB vehicle with YZi Labs' support.	Not verified
Windtree Therapeutics	A biotech that announced a BNB treasury plan in July 2025.	Not verified; shares later moved off Nasdaq

The record is mixed. CEA's shares fell by about two-thirds in the first half of 2026 as BNB's price dropped, and YZi Labs, its largest shareholder, fought a public proxy battle with management that ended in June 2026 with YZi's nominees joining the board. A treasury company's shares can fall much further than the coin it holds.

Chapter 10 of 20

Binance, BNB Chain and the regulators

The relationship between a company and "its" blockchain, a decade of regulatory trouble, and the weekend in October 2025 that put Binance's market power under a microscope.

Binance, the company

A private business with owners, executives and employees
Holds customer funds; needs licences
Created BNB and sold it in 2017
Lists tokens, runs Launchpool, sets fee discounts
Can be fined, monitored or banned by governments

BNB Chain, the network

Open-source software run by independent validators
Anyone can use it without permission or an account
Changes are proposed publicly as BEPs
Cannot be "licensed", but its apps and on-ramps can be regulated
Would keep running if the exchange closed, though much weakened

The honest summary: legally separate, economically inseparable. Binance's customers are the chain's users, Binance-linked investors fund its apps, and Binance's reputation moves BNB's price. When Binance was sued, BNB fell. When CZ was pardoned, BNB rose.

The regulatory record

2021
Warnings worldwide. Regulators in the UK, Japan, Germany, Italy and elsewhere warn that Binance is operating without authorisation. Binance begins requiring identity checks for all users.
Mar 2023
CFTC lawsuit. The US derivatives regulator sues Binance and CZ for offering unregistered products to Americans.
Jun 2023
SEC lawsuit. Thirteen charges, including the claim that BNB itself was sold as an unregistered security.
Nov 2023
Guilty plea. $4.3 billion in penalties across the Justice Department, Treasury and CFTC. Two independent monitors are imposed: three years for the Justice Department, five for FinCEN.
2023–24
Retreats. Binance leaves or is pushed out of markets including Canada, the Netherlands and Nigeria, where two executives were detained in 2024.
May 2025
SEC case dropped. Dismissed with prejudice on 29 May 2025. The SEC called it a policy decision.
Sep 2025
Monitor talks. Bloomberg reports Binance is close to a deal to end the Justice Department monitorship early. No public confirmation followed that we could find; in April 2026 a US senator formally asked the department for the monitors' status.
Dec 2025
Abu Dhabi licence. ADGM's regulator authorises three Binance entities to run the global exchange, clearing and brokerage from January 2026. For the first time, Binance.com has a regulatory home.
2026
Iran allegations. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal report that Binance compliance staff flagged more than a billion dollars of flows to Iran-linked entities, that some of those staff were dismissed and that the Justice Department is investigating. Binance says the reports are inaccurate, that it has zero tolerance for illicit activity, and has sued the Journal for defamation. Nothing has been proven in court.
Mid-2026
Europe. The EU's MiCA transition period ended on 1 July 2026. Reuters reported in June that Binance's application in Greece was expected to be rejected, which Binance disputed. Check the current status for your country before relying on the service.

10–11 October 2025: the liquidation event

On the evening of Friday 10 October 2025, President Trump announced 100% tariffs on Chinese imports. Crypto markets, heavily leveraged after months of gains, fell hard. In about a day more than $19 billion of leveraged positions were forcibly closed across all exchanges, affecting over 1.6 million accounts. It was the largest liquidation event the industry had recorded.

Binance was at the centre of the argument that followed. During the worst forty minutes, three assets that traders used as collateral on Binance, the synthetic dollar USDe and the staking tokens wBETH and BNSOL, traded far below their normal value on Binance's own order books. USDe touched about 65 cents there while holding close to a dollar elsewhere. Because Binance valued collateral using its internal prices, accounts that held those assets were liquidated when they might otherwise have survived. Some users also reported that the platform was slow or unresponsive.

Binance paid about $283 million to users affected by the three de-pegged assets and changed how it prices them. On 14 October it added a $400 million "Together Initiative": $300 million in vouchers for liquidated traders and $100 million in low-interest loans for institutions. It said plainly that this was not an admission of liability. CZ and Richard Teng both rejected the claim that Binance caused the crash, describing it as a market-wide event.

BNB itself recovered quickly and set its all-time high three days later. The episode nonetheless left a mark. It showed that a single exchange's internal pricing can decide who is wiped out, and it is the most-cited recent example in arguments about Binance's size.

Chapter 11 of 20

Roadmap and what comes next

What BNB Chain says it will build next. Roadmaps are statements of intent, and dates slip.

Delivered · 2025 to mid-2026

The speed programme

Block time from 3 s to 0.45 s
Finality from 7.5 s to about 0.65 s
Gas price down roughly 60-fold from 3 gwei to 0.05 gwei
Benchmark throughput about 5,200 TPS
A second node client, written in Rust (Reth)

In progress · second half of 2026

Doubling capacity again

Another 2× in throughput on BNB Smart Chain
"Lanes" that keep one busy app from congesting everyone else
Parallel execution of transactions
Fee structures tuned for specific industries
Privacy tools aimed at institutions, new stablecoin standards
Research into quantum-resistant signatures

Planned · testnet late 2026, mainnet early 2027

A new layer 1 for trading and AI agents

Targets: 100,000+ TPS, confirmation in under 50 ms
No public mempool, to make front-running harder
Reserved block space for oracles and liquidations
Built-in confidential transactions
An official bridge to BNB Smart Chain, with BNB as the shared coin

The new chain would be the fourth in the family. BNB Chain's chief technology officer has been candid about the goal, telling The Block that for the fastest traders a centralised exchange "still wins today". The project is an attempt to close that gap. These are design targets for software that had not reached a public testnet when this guide was checked.

Things to watch

Decentralisation. Faster blocks need stronger hardware. Whether the validator set widens or narrows will say a lot about priorities.
The US monitors. An early end, or an adverse report, would both move the story.
The Iran investigations. Unresolved as of October 2026.
ETF staking. US funds launched without it. Approval would change their appeal.
CZ's role. Any formal return to Binance would be a major event.
The burn. At recent prices, 100 million is still years off.

Chapter 12 of 20

BNB compared with its rivals

BNB against the networks and exchange tokens it is most often measured against. Figures are approximate and change; the trade-offs are what matter.

Versus other smart-contract chains

	BNB Smart Chain	Ethereum	Solana	TRON
Launched	2020	2015	2020	2018
Consensus	Proof of Staked Authority	Proof of Stake	Proof of Stake with Proof of History	Delegated Proof of Stake
Block producers	45 elected, 21 active	Hundreds of thousands of validators	Several hundred validators	27 super representatives
Block time	0.45 s	12 s	about 0.4 s	3 s
Typical fee	under 1 cent	cents to dollars on mainnet; cheaper on layer 2s	under 1 cent	free to a few dollars, depending on staked resources
Runs Ethereum apps?	Yes	Yes (the original)	No, different design	Largely compatible
Coin supply	Falling towards 100M; no issuance	No cap; issuance partly offset by fee burn	No cap; inflation declining over time	No cap; roughly flat to falling
Best known for	Retail trading, stablecoin transfers, memecoins	DeFi depth, institutions, security	High-speed trading, consumer apps	USDT transfers
Main criticism	Dependence on Binance; small validator set	Mainnet cost; fragmented layer 2s	Past outages; hardware demands	Concentrated control

Versus other exchange tokens

	BNB	OKB	Others (LEO, CRO, KCS, BGB)
Issuer	Binance	OKX	Bitfinex, Crypto.com, KuCoin, Bitget
Own blockchain?	Yes: a top-tier chain with a large app ecosystem	Yes: X Layer, a much smaller Ethereum layer 2	Some have chains; none approach BNB Chain's usage
Supply policy	Formula-based burn to 100M	Supply fixed at 21M after a large one-off burn in August 2025	Mostly buy-back-and-burn tied to exchange revenue
Exchange perks	Fee discounts, Launchpool, airdrops	Fee discounts, token sales	Fee discounts, staking perks
Regulated investment products	US spot ETF since May 2026	None in the US that we could verify	Limited
Shared weakness	Value depends on the health and conduct of one exchange

BNB is the only exchange token that grew into a general-purpose blockchain used by people who have never opened a Binance account. That is what separates it from its category, and it is also why it is compared with Ethereum and Solana rather than with loyalty points.

Chapter 13 of 20

Wallets for BNB

Where you keep BNB decides who controls it. Filter by the kind of wallet you want.

Custodial

Binance account

Your BNB sits in an account at the exchange. Binance holds the keys.

Good for: Buying, trading, fee discounts, Launchpool and HODLer Airdrops.
Watch out: You rely on Binance to stay solvent and to let you withdraw. Not available to US residents (Binance.US is separate).

Self-custody, in-app

Binance Wallet

A self-custody wallet built into the Binance app. It splits the key into shares (MPC) instead of giving you a seed phrase.

Good for: Beginners moving from the exchange to on-chain apps, and Binance Alpha.
Watch out: Recovery depends on your Binance account, device and recovery password. Convenient, but tied to one company's app.

Self-custody, mobile and browser

Trust Wallet

A multi-chain wallet owned by Binance since 2018. You hold the seed phrase.

Good for: Everyday use of BNB Smart Chain and opBNB apps on a phone.
Watch out: A malicious update to its Chrome extension in December 2025 led to about $7 million in losses, which Trust Wallet pledged to cover. Keep large sums on a hardware wallet.

Self-custody, browser and mobile

MetaMask

The most widely used Ethereum wallet. BNB Smart Chain (chain ID 56) and opBNB (chain ID 204) can be added as networks.

Good for: People who already use Ethereum apps and want one wallet for everything.
Watch out: Check the network before sending. Only add networks from trusted sources.

Self-custody, browser

Rabby

A browser wallet that previews what a transaction will do before you sign.

Good for: Active DeFi users who want clearer warnings.
Watch out: Newer and smaller than MetaMask; still a hot wallet.

Hardware

Ledger

A hardware wallet that keeps keys offline. Supports BNB on BNB Smart Chain through Ledger's own app or through MetaMask.

Good for: Long-term holdings and larger amounts.
Watch out: Buy only from the manufacturer. Never type your seed phrase into a computer or phone.

Hardware

Trezor

An open-source hardware wallet. Works with BNB Smart Chain as an EVM network.

Good for: Holders who prefer open-source firmware.
Watch out: Some features need a companion wallet such as MetaMask.

Hardware and mobile

SafePal

A lower-cost hardware wallet and app with close BNB Chain integration. Binance was an early investor.

Good for: Budget hardware storage for BNB Chain assets.
Watch out: Fewer independent security reviews than the two market leaders.

Five rules that prevent most losses

Write your seed phrase on paper. Never photograph it, type it into a website or share it with "support".
Withdraw BNB on the BNB Smart Chain (BEP-20) network unless you know you need another one.
Send a small test amount before a large transfer.
Keep a little BNB in any on-chain wallet to pay for gas.
Be suspicious of any token that appears in your wallet uninvited. Do not interact with it.

Chapter 14 of 20

Where and how to buy BNB

A neutral walkthrough. We do not recommend any platform, and nothing here is a suggestion to buy.

Route 1

A centralised exchange

Binance has the deepest BNB market. Other large exchanges, including OKX, Bybit, KuCoin, Kraken and Gate, also list it. US residents use Binance.US or another US-licensed venue that offers it. Availability varies by country.

Route 2

On-chain

If you already hold crypto, you can bridge to BNB Smart Chain and swap for BNB on a DEX such as PancakeSwap. Some wallets include a card-payment option through third-party providers.

Route 3

An ETF or ETP

Through a stockbroker: VBNB in the US, or exchange-traded products in Europe. You get the price, not the coin, and you pay an annual fee.

Step by step: buying on an exchange

Choose a platform that is licensed where you live. Check your national regulator's register, not just the exchange's own website.
Create an account and verify your identity. Expect to provide photo ID. Turn on two-factor authentication with an authenticator app, not SMS.
Deposit money. Bank transfer is usually cheapest. Card payments are quick but cost more.
Place the order. A market order buys immediately at the current price. A limit order lets you set the price you are willing to pay.
Check the fees. Look at both the trading fee and the spread between the buy and sell price.
Decide where to keep it. Leaving it on the exchange is convenient. Withdrawing to your own wallet gives you control and responsibility.
If you withdraw, pick the right network. Choose BNB Smart Chain (BEP-20), paste your wallet address, check the first and last characters, and send a test amount first.
Keep records. In most countries buying, selling and swapping crypto has tax consequences.

Tick the steps as you go; your progress is saved on this device.

Common traps

Fake Binance or Trust Wallet apps and websites. Type addresses yourself; do not follow adverts.
"Support agents" who message you first. Real support never asks for a seed phrase.
Withdrawing on a network the destination does not support.
Buying a look-alike token on a DEX. Real BNB is the chain's native coin and has no contract address on BNB Smart Chain.

Chapter 15 of 20

Risks and criticisms

The case against, stated as plainly as the case for. Read this chapter before you form a view.

High

Dependence on Binance

BNB's demand, development funding, marketing and much of its user base come from one company. If Binance were banned from a major market, suffered a serious breach or lost customers' trust, BNB would feel it immediately. No other top-five cryptocurrency is this exposed to a single business.

High

Centralisation of the validator set

Forty-five elected validators, 21 active at once, with a heavy overlap with the Binance ecosystem. In October 2022 validators coordinated to halt the entire chain within hours. That contained a hack. It also showed that a small group can stop the network or, in principle, censor it.

High

Concentrated ownership

A very large share of BNB is believed to be held by CZ, Binance and related entities, though exact figures are not public. Concentration means governance votes are not widely distributed and the freely traded supply is smaller than the headline number.

High

Regulatory and legal risk

Binance is a convicted company operating under two US monitors, facing new allegations about Iran-linked flows that it denies, and with an uncertain position under EU rules. The SEC's dismissal settled one case without settling the underlying legal question about BNB. Politics helped Binance in 2025; politics can change.

Medium

Hacks and bridge risk

The 2022 bridge exploit created 2 million BNB. Binance's exchange lost 7,000 bitcoin in 2019. Trust Wallet's browser extension was compromised in December 2025. Apps on the chain are hacked regularly. Users were reimbursed in the exchange and wallet cases, but that is a choice a company makes, not a guarantee.

Medium

Scams and low-quality tokens

Cheap, permissionless token creation attracts fraud. BNB Chain has repeatedly ranked among the networks with the most rug pulls and exploits by count. The memecoin launchpads made this worse. The chain is not responsible for every token on it, but users bear the losses.

Medium

Market-structure risk

October 2025 showed how Binance's internal pricing and risk systems can decide the fate of leveraged traders. Compensation was paid without admitting liability. Anyone using leverage on a dominant exchange is trusting its systems under stress.

Medium

Hardware and state growth

Sub-second blocks and thousands of transactions a second require powerful machines and fast storage. That raises the cost of running a node and makes it harder for independent operators to verify the chain themselves.

Medium

Political entanglement

The pardon, the USD1 stablecoin and the MGX deal have tied Binance's image to one US administration and its family businesses. Congressional Democrats have opened inquiries. A change in political weather could bring renewed scrutiny.

Always

Volatility

BNB fell about 60% from its October 2025 peak to its 2026 lows. It has had several drawdowns of that size in its history. A shrinking supply does not prevent them.

Deep dive: the October 2022 bridge exploit

The two BNB chains were connected by a bridge called the BSC Token Hub. On 6 October 2022 an attacker found a flaw in how the bridge verified proofs and convinced it to release 2 million BNB that did not exist, worth roughly $570 million. The attacker used some as collateral to borrow other assets and moved around $100 million to other chains before validators stopped BNB Smart Chain. The remaining funds were frozen on the chain. Nobody's existing balance was taken, but the incident created coins from nothing and required a coordinated halt. It became the main argument for retiring the Beacon Chain, and it is why the 2026 Pasteur fork is still tightening bridge verification rules.

Deep dive: what would happen to BNB if Binance disappeared?

Nobody knows, which is the point. The chain is open-source and its validators could keep it running. But the fee discounts, Launchpool rewards and airdrops would be gone, the main fiat on-ramp would close, the largest funder of the ecosystem would be absent and confidence would collapse. A fair guess is that the network would survive in a much smaller form. Investors in BNB are, to a large degree, taking a view on Binance.

Chapter 16 of 20

Myths versus facts

Ten things people say about BNB, from both its fans and its detractors, checked against the record.

Chapter 17 of 20

Glossary

Every term used in this guide, in one searchable list.

Search the glossary

Auto-Burn: The formula that decides how much BNB is destroyed each quarter, based on BNB's price and the number of blocks produced.
Beacon Chain: The original 2019 Binance Chain. It was switched off in December 2024 after the BNB Chain Fusion.
BEP: BNB Evolution Proposal: a formal proposal to change the network, similar to Ethereum's EIPs.
BEP-20: The token standard on BNB Smart Chain, equivalent to Ethereum's ERC-20. Most tokens on the chain are BEP-20.
BEP-95: The 2021 rule that burns a share of the gas fees in every block in real time.
Binance: The cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2017 that created BNB. A company, not a blockchain.
Binance Alpha: A section of the Binance app that surfaces early-stage tokens, many of them on BNB Chain.
Block time: How often a new block of transactions is produced. On BNB Smart Chain it is about 0.45 seconds since January 2026.
BNB Chain: The umbrella name for the network family: BNB Smart Chain, opBNB and BNB Greenfield.
BNB Smart Chain (BSC): The main layer 1 blockchain where BNB is the gas coin. Compatible with Ethereum apps.
Bridge: Software that moves assets between blockchains. A frequent target for hackers.
Burn: Permanently destroying coins by sending them to an address nobody can spend from.
Cabinet: One of the 21 highest-staked validators on BNB Smart Chain.
Candidate: A validator ranked 22nd to 45th by stake. Candidates get a smaller share of block-producing turns.
CEX: Centralised exchange: a company such as Binance that holds customer funds and matches trades.
Custody: Who controls the private keys. Self-custody means you do; custodial means a company does.
DEX: Decentralised exchange: trading run by smart contracts, such as PancakeSwap.
EVM: Ethereum Virtual Machine: the software environment that runs smart contracts. BSC and opBNB both use it.
Fast finality: A voting step where validators confirm a block so it can no longer be reversed. On BSC this now takes around a second.
Gas: The fee paid to have a transaction processed, priced in gwei and paid in BNB.
Greenfield: BNB Chain's decentralised data-storage network, where storage fees are paid in BNB.
Gwei: One billionth of a coin. Gas prices are quoted in gwei; BSC's floor is 0.05 gwei.
Hard fork: A network upgrade that every node must adopt, such as Lorentz, Maxwell, Fermi or Pasteur.
HODLer Airdrops: A Binance programme that gives new tokens to users who hold BNB in certain Binance products.
Launchpool: A Binance programme where users lock BNB (or other assets) to earn newly listed tokens.
Layer 2 (L2): A network that processes transactions off the main chain and posts the results back to it. opBNB is BNB Chain's L2.
Liquid staking: Staking through a protocol that hands back a tradable receipt token, such as slisBNB from Lista.
Liquidation: When an exchange forcibly closes a leveraged position because its collateral has fallen too far.
MEV: Maximal extractable value: profit taken by reordering transactions, for example by front-running a trade.
opBNB: BNB Chain's optimistic-rollup layer 2, built on the OP Stack, with 0.25-second blocks and tiny fees.
PoSA: Proof of Staked Authority: BSC's consensus system, where a small elected set of staked validators take turns producing blocks.
Seed phrase: The 12 or 24 words that control a self-custody wallet. Anyone who has them has your coins.
Slashing: A penalty that takes part of a validator's stake for misbehaviour such as double-signing.
Stablecoin: A token designed to hold a steady value, usually one US dollar, such as USDT, USDC or USD1.
Staking: Locking BNB with a validator to help secure the chain and earn a share of fees.
TVL: Total value locked: the dollar value of assets deposited in a chain's DeFi apps.
Validator: A node operator that produces and confirms blocks. BSC elects 45 each day.
YZi Labs: The investment firm formerly called Binance Labs. It manages CZ's and Yi He's capital and backs many BNB Chain projects.

Chapter 18 of 20

Test yourself: the BNB quiz

Thirteen questions, each with an explanation. Your best score is saved on this device.

Ready? Everything you need is somewhere on this page.

Best score so far: none yet

Chapter 19 of 20

Frequently asked questions

Short answers to the questions people ask most.

What is BNB in simple terms?

BNB is the cryptocurrency created by the Binance exchange in 2017. Today it does two jobs. On Binance it gives holders trading-fee discounts and access to token launches. On BNB Chain, a family of public blockchains, it is the coin you pay transaction fees with, stake to secure the network and use across thousands of apps.

What does BNB stand for?

It originally stood for Binance Coin. Since the February 2022 rebrand, BNB Chain says the letters stand for "Build and Build". Most people simply call it BNB.

Is BNB the same as Binance?

No. Binance is a private company that runs an exchange. BNB is a coin, and BNB Chain is a public blockchain network that anyone can use without a Binance account. Binance created both, remains the largest influence on them and is believed to be linked to a large share of the supply, so the two are closely tied, but they are not the same thing.

How many BNB are there?

After the 36th quarterly burn on 15 July 2026 the total supply was 133,166,128 BNB, down from 200 million at launch. No new BNB is created, and the burn programme is designed to continue until 100 million remain.

How does the BNB burn work?

There are two mechanisms. The quarterly Auto-Burn destroys an amount set by a public formula using BNB's average price and the number of blocks produced. Separately, under BEP-95, a portion of the gas fees in every block is burned in real time. Roughly 291,000 BNB had been burned that second way by July 2026.

Who controls BNB Chain?

BNB Smart Chain is run by 45 validators elected daily by stake, with 21 producing blocks at any time. Changes are proposed as BEPs and voted on by validators. In practice the core developers and many large validators have ties to the Binance ecosystem, which is why critics call the chain more centralised than Ethereum or Bitcoin.

Is Changpeng Zhao (CZ) still in charge of Binance?

No. CZ resigned as CEO in November 2023 as part of a US plea deal and was replaced by Richard Teng. Yi He became co-CEO in December 2025. CZ was pardoned in October 2025 but has not returned to management. He remains the largest shareholder and a very visible voice for BNB.

Can I stake BNB?

Yes. You can delegate BNB to a validator on BNB Smart Chain and earn a share of transaction fees. Rewards vary and there is an unbonding period before you can withdraw. Liquid-staking protocols and exchange "earn" products offer alternatives, each with its own risks.

Is there a BNB ETF?

Yes. VanEck's VBNB began trading on Nasdaq on 28 May 2026, the first US fund to hold BNB directly. Grayscale has filed for a similar fund under the ticker GBNB; we could not confirm a launch as of October 2026. Exchange-traded BNB products have existed in Europe for several years.

Can US residents use Binance?

Not the global platform. US customers are served by a separate company, Binance.US, which has a smaller range of products. US investors can also get BNB exposure through a brokerage account using the VBNB ETF, or by using self-custody wallets on BNB Chain.

What is the difference between BNB Smart Chain, opBNB and Greenfield?

BNB Smart Chain is the main blockchain for apps and tokens. opBNB is a layer 2 built on top of it for even cheaper, higher-volume activity such as games. Greenfield is a storage network for data. BNB pays the fees on all three.

Is BNB a good investment?

This site does not give investment advice or price predictions. BNB has real uses and a shrinking supply, but it is also volatile, closely tied to one company and exposed to regulatory decisions. Read the risks section, and never invest money you cannot afford to lose.

Is BNB a security?

The US SEC argued in a 2023 lawsuit that BNB was sold as an unregistered security. That case was dismissed with prejudice in May 2025 as a matter of policy, without a court ruling on the question. The first US spot BNB ETF launched a year later. Other countries apply their own rules.

Which network should I choose when withdrawing BNB from an exchange?

For most people, BNB Smart Chain (often labelled BSC or BEP-20). The old BEP-2 network belonged to the Beacon Chain and no longer exists. Always check that the receiving wallet or exchange supports the network you pick, and send a small test amount first.

Chapter 20 of 20

Sources and further reading

The sources used to check this guide in October 2026. Where sources disagreed or a claim could not be confirmed, the text says so.

Official and primary

BNB Chain: 2026 tech roadmapBlock time, finality, gas and 2026 goals
BNB Chain: H2 2026 tech roadmapH1 results and the next-generation layer 1
BNB Chain FusionBeacon Chain sunset dates
BNB burn trackerAuto-Burn formula and live burn data
BNB Chain docs: opBNB Fourier upgradeopBNB block time
SEC litigation release 26316Dismissal of SEC v. Binance, May 2025
Grayscale BNB ETF, Form S-1/A (June 2026)Fund structure and BNB market data
Senator Blumenthal letter to the Justice Department (April 2026)Status of the Binance monitorships

Press releases and sponsored articles are identified as such in the titles above and were used only for figures published by BNB Chain itself. Wikipedia entries were used for uncontroversial dates and cross-checked where possible.

Related guides

BNB Unpacked is part of a network of independent, single-subject guides. If this was useful, these are the natural next reads.

The Coin GalaxyThe hub for the whole network. Every guide, one map.Ethereum UnpackedThe chain BNB Smart Chain was modelled on, down to the same addresses.What is TRON?The other giant of cheap stablecoin transfers.What is Solana?BNB Chain's closest rival on speed and retail trading.Hyperliquid UnpackedThe on-chain derivatives exchange that Aster, incubated by YZi Labs, is chasing.What is Avalanche?Another Ethereum-compatible layer 1 competing for the same apps.

What is BNB?

What BNB does well

What to be careful about

Seven badges, one complete picture

Four eras of BNB

The ERC-20 token

Binance Chain

Binance Smart Chain

BNB Chain

Why a second chain?

Dropping the Binance name

The Fusion: retiring the first chain

Binance and BNB are born

First quarterly burn

Binance buys Trust Wallet

Binance Chain mainnet

Exchange hack: 7,000 BTC

Binance Smart Chain launches

DeFi boom peak near $690

BEP-95 and the Auto-Burn

Rebrand to BNB Chain

Bridge exploit mints 2 million BNB

FTX collapses

CFTC and SEC sue

opBNB and Greenfield go live

$4.3 billion US settlement

CZ sentenced and jailed

Beacon Chain switched off

MGX invests $2 billion in Binance

Lorentz and Maxwell

SEC case dismissed

BNB treasury companies appear

BNB crosses $1,000

Gas floor cut to 0.05 gwei

Record liquidation event

All-time high of about $1,370

CZ is pardoned

Yi He becomes co-CEO

Abu Dhabi licence

Fermi: 0.45-second blocks

Iran allegations

CZ publishes a memoir

First US spot BNB ETF

A fourth chain is announced

36th quarterly burn

Pasteur hard fork

Where things stand

Stake

Elect

Produce

Finalise

Elect a validator set

Why it is fast: the sub-second block upgrades

Feel the difference in block time

One BNB, three places

One BNB, three places

What a transaction costs

Fee comparison calculator

And on the exchange: the BNB fee discount

Quarterly Auto-Burn

Real-time gas burn (BEP-95)

No new issuance

The Auto-Burn formula

Burn mechanism simulator

Recent burns

What BNB is used for

Gas

Exchange fee discounts

Launchpool and HODLer Airdrops

Staking

DeFi collateral

Payments

From Jiangsu to Vancouver

A trading-systems engineer

Discovering Bitcoin

Building Binance

The fall of FTX

The US case and the guilty plea

Prison

The pardon