Binance Review
Binance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of traded volume. It was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao (a.k.a CZ), a developer who previously worked in creating high-frequency trading software. Binance was initially based in China but later moved its headquarters as the government increased its restriction on cryptocurrencies.
Binance has multiple global locations, with its headquarters operating out of the Cayman Islands and Seychelles with a strong presence in Europe and the United Arab Emirates, which helps with regulation and global compliance requirements.
Since its launch, Binance has seen an astronomical level of growth, quickly taking and holding onto the top spot as the largest exchange in the world by a significant margin.
This unprecedented growth is the result of multiple factors; some of them including a successful ICO, superior infrastructure that was able to handle high volumes, a huge offering of cryptocurrencies and tradable assets, low fees, full fiat banking services, and the launch of BNB token.
Cryptocurrencies Available on Binance
Binance has one of the best selections of cryptocurrency assets to offer its customers, falling behind only to KuCoin and Gate.io. It currently has over 400 cryptocurrencies in the spot market and nearly 500 tradable assets across all markets, similar numbers to OKX.
Tradeable cryptocurrencies have over 23 base currencies to trade against, making it a truly diverse marketplace for traders and investors. This allows better arbitrage opportunities and diversification opportunities for traders.
On top of digital assets, Binance supports approximately 60 fiat currencies either through credit and debit card and bank deposit or through its P2P marketplace. This allows the client to enter the crypto market easily as one can choose their local currency to buy crypto and not worry about converting it into USD or any other international currency.
BNB is Binance’s native cryptocurrency and has been revolutionary for the exchange. It was one of the first native exchange tokens to be launched and had a pivotal impact on the operations of the exchange. BNB was initially issued as an ERC-20 token but was later transferred into the Binance Chain network. There are many uses of BNB tokens within the Binance ecosystem, some of them include a reduced trading fee, staking, BNB vault, etc.
Binance Products
Binance has a massive arsenal of products to offer its clients, the most in the industry by quite a large margin. Binance has been very active in providing its user base with different types of products to help them capitalise on new market opportunities and take advantage of innovative features.
You can find out more detailed information in our dedicated Binance Review, but we will cover the highlights below.
Futures Market
Binance’s Future market can be broadly classified as USD stable coin market and Coin market. The main difference in these markets is that the former has a base currency of various USD stable coins such as USDT and BUSD but the latter has only USD fiat currency as its base. Futures contracts can be divided into perpetual contracts and quarterly contracts. Binance currently has more than 130 cryptocurrencies listed on its futures market, so there is likely something of interest for most futures traders.
Vanilla Options
Binance offers its users “European-style” Vanilla Bitcoin Options contracts, which are offered intending to give users more choices to diversify their portfolios and manage their market exposure. Users can both buy the options for hedging and trading, as well as write and sell options as an issuer.
Leveraged Tokens
Leveraged tokens have become hugely popular products, being featured by many of the major exchanges like KuCoin, OKX, and Bybit.
Binance offers leverage tokens that mimic its underlying token but by a predefined leverage level up to 4x. Leveraged tokens are great for traders as they provide reasonable amounts of leverage, but trade on the spot market, removing the complexities and risks associated with leverage trading.
Binance Earn
Binance launched an innovative new offering to its users which they call Binance Earn. This includes products that allow users to earn passive income on their crypto by utilising a multitude of different products that vary in returns and risk.
Binance Earn offers users products such as staking, opening a savings account, liquidity farming, BNB vault, etc. Various Earn products provide users with the option to invest in a fixed or flexible time frame.
A Wide Range of Ways to Earn on Binance
The Earn feature is so popular that most exchanges now offer some sort of earn platform, but Binance remains the best platform for users to earn passive income on their crypto holdings. Products such as staking and saving offer a simple and safe hands-off approach with modest APYs, while higher-risk advanced products such as dual investment offer higher returns for users with a greater risk appetite.
Binance Card
Crypto cards have become very popular among crypto enthusiasts with the cards offered by Crypto.com and Binance being the industry favourites.
Earn BNB on Purchases. Image via Binance
The Binance card offers users up to 8% cashback in BNB tokens for everyday purchases. Powered by Visa, the card is accepted pretty much anywhere and has no yearly or activation fees.
Binance Launchpad
The Binance Launchpad was created as an alternative initial listing venue to the ICO model. Customers on Binance can take part in the IEOs on the Launchpad, making it easy for users to get involved while sidestepping the complexities and exclusivity of traditional IDO/ICO events.
A Look at the Binance Launchpad
The Binance Launchpad remains the best-performing CEX launchpad with many investors enjoying high ROIs from some of the most promising project launches in the industry.
Binance NFT Marketplace
Binance was one of the first exchanges to announce its NFT marketplace in 2021, and it was an instant success. Thanks to NFT support on the Binance chain, users could mint, buy, and sell NFTs with lightning speeds and for fractions of a dollar.
A Look at Some of the NFTs on the Binance Marketplace
The Binance NFT marketplace also supports Ethereum NFTs from some of the most popular collections.
On top of all this, there are also crypto loans, an array of institutional services, the Trust Wallet, Binance Labs incubator, the Binance DEX, Research and Binance Learn, and more. Binance truly is a beast and offers pretty much everything under the sun that a crypto user could need.
Types of Accounts and Binance Fees
Binance has 10 tiers of accounts that are determined by VIP level. A user can upgrade the VIP level by two methods, either by achieving a set trade volume in the margin or spot account or by buying and holding a certain number of BNB tokens.
Binance offers multiple 0-fee trading pairs and many ways to fund an account and purchase crypto for zero, or low fees. One of the ways that Binance has remained such a dominant player in the exchange industry is by offering some of the lowest fees possible.
Binance Security
Binance places a strong emphasis on the security and safety of funds. It offers several security safeguards, such as 2FA or U2F login and fund transfer, wallet and device management, restricted sub-account creation and email/mobile notification to alert the user of any malicious practice, which can be sent with anti-phishing codes to ensure authenticity.
In May 2019, Binance was a victim of a malicious attack where it lost $40 million worth of funds. However, thanks to its fund insurance, customers who lost funds were reimbursed by Binance’s Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) that Binance introduced in 2018. The SAFU fund acts as insurance and is an account funded by Binance from taking 10% of all trading fees generated and setting them aside for security breaches.
Since the breach, Binance has substantially increased its security protocols and there have been no issues since. Along with round-the-clock platform monitoring and comprehensive cold storage and private key protection policies, Binance is one of the most secure exchanges in the world. Binance users can also access multiple additional security options as mentioned above to further lock down their accounts and protect against unauthorised access.
https://twitter.com/binance/status/1572642870019985414
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzb2ZNFcVfI
Contact Person:
Irene C, NFT BD
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ircheung/?originalSubdomain=hk
Gregg Bell, Head of Growth at Binance.US
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregg-bell-38b5389/
Yumei (Anna) Wang, Director at Binance.US Institutional Product
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yumeiwang1/?originalSubdomain=ca