As the end of 2024 approaches, hotspots in the crypto asset market continue to emerge: the well-known NFT IP Pudgy Penguins issues the token PENGU, the stablecoin protocol Usual (USUAL) backed by real-world assets (RWA) reignites discussions on decentralized stablecoins, and the biological DAO network BIO Protocol distributes the token BIO, igniting a surge in the DeSci (decentralized science) concept board.
If you pay enough attention, it's not hard to find that these popular market assets are all closely related to Binance: PENGU became the fifth project for Binance HODLers as soon as it launched; USUAL and BIO successively landed on Binance Launchpool, with both projects receiving investment from Binance Labs.
At the end of 2024, Binance continues to maintain its effect of leading hotspots. The status of HODLer, Launchpool, and other BNB 'benefit launchers' is full, while the emerging project 'miner' Binance Alpha platform has begun to gain momentum in wallets. This colossal entity in the crypto asset market has begun to strive for 2025.
With the U.S. building a 'crypto capital' after Trump's election, 2025 presents a favorable outlook for Binance and the entire crypto asset industry. Despite many uncertainties ahead, three things are likely to be realized within the Binance ecosystem, directly relating to its 250 million users.
BNB's new high continues, expected to push beyond $1000.
BNB is not far from its highest point again.
On December 28, with the launch of the 63rd project BIO Protocol (BIO) on Binance Launchpool, BNB, as one of the locked assets, surged to $730, while $795 is the historical highest price created by the native token BNB of BNB Chain and Binance ecosystem assets on December 4.
'Rather than waiting for ETH to hit a new high, it's better to wait for BNB to break $1000.' A crypto asset investor expressed such feelings about the market cap Top 2 and confidence in the Top 5 on social media.
Indeed, throughout 2024, the crypto asset market seems to have had only Bitcoin (BTC) contributing an impressive performance, with prices jumping to $70,000, $90,000, and $100,000 in rapid succession; while people hoped that Ethereum (ETH), the 'second-in-command', would also follow BTC to break historical records as it had in the past, it instead had a 46.3% increase this year, which left holders feeling defensive, far outperformed by BNB (BNB Chain), SOL (Solana), and other competitive chain assets.
According to Coingecko data, as of December 31, 2024, at 14:00 (UTC+8), BNB's year-to-date increase is 120%, far exceeding ETH, and even surpassing BTC's 119% in the market cap Top 10 (excluding USDT, USDC).
Top 10 crypto asset data as of December 31, 14:00 (UTC+8) (excluding stablecoins)
Throughout 2024, BNB's candlestick trends rarely exhibited sudden surges or plummets, showing a volatile upward trend alongside BTC, demonstrating a strong sense of 'long-termism.'
This ongoing positive trend is largely attributed to Binance's strong empowerment—the various yield tools within the trading platform are deeply tied to users' BNB holdings, with the LaunchPool that distributes new assets almost every month and the newly launched HODLer encouraging users to continuously hold BNB.
Taking this year's data from the 19 completed activities on Binance Launchpool as an example, the total amount of BNB staked ranged from 11 million to 26 million coins. Although the total staked amount of the other staked-supporting FDUSD was mostly between 1 billion and 3 billion in most projects, the number of participants (ranging from over 80,000 to over 200,000) was not as high as BNB (ranging from over 110,000 to over 260,000), highlighting the large user holding volume of BNB.
Data on Binance Launchpool activities in 2024
This may be related to the new asset APY (annual percentage yield) that users receive. Data shows that the conservative APY for staking FDUSD is between 18% and 98%, while BNB's staking yield has a conservative APY between 27% and 236%, overall higher than FDUSD.
This does not even account for the potential gains from BNB, as users may be more inclined to stake BNB due to the higher potential yields, which is an important reason why BNB continues to maintain increased holdings among users, thereby driving the price to gradually rise.
Moreover, the recent Binance HODLer airdrop activity has also become an important force for BNB's rise. The HODLer airdrop is a reward program specifically for BNB holders, based on BNB balance snapshots, airdropping tokens to users who subscribe to or use fixed-term Simple Earn products with BNB, which will become part of the revenue once these assets are listed on Binance.
In 2024, Binance HODLer has completed 5 new asset airdrops, with the token PENGU from the NFT IP Pudgy Penguins being the latest hit. During the MOVE airdrop from December 2-5, BNB surged from $647 to $740, an increase of over 14%.
Compared to these direct methods that can lock liquidity, BNB's deflationary model since its issuance seems insufficient. However, BNB's ongoing destruction is still being executed according to contract, decreasing every quarter. As of now, the circulating supply of BNB is around 145 million; at the current destruction rate, its total supply will drop to 100 million in about four years.
As long as Binance continues to provide sufficient support, there seems to be no asset more certain than BNB in the crypto market; it to some extent represents the market's expectations for this trading platform.
On December 3, crypto asset analyst Javon Marks, who has 48,000 followers, tweeted a prediction that BNB will reach a new all-time high due to the bull market, potentially rising to $2000.
Analyst Javon Marks' prediction tweet
This prediction may be aggressive, but BNB, which has already touched the $795 high, is not far from $1000. In 2025, this may be the case during several periods of rising markets alongside Launchpool.
Next year will be the second year after Bitcoin's fourth halving. According to historical market patterns, the peak of a bull market often occurs in the year following a halving. More importantly, the U.S., a crucial component of the crypto asset market, is showing a friendly attitude towards the crypto industry. Combined with market trends and a friendly environment, Marks' prediction is not impossible.
Trump's crypto-friendly stance Binance's compliance expansion
In 2025, a definite action in the crypto industry will be closely watching Donald Trump, the annual topic figure who will once again take office as U.S. president, bringing 'Bitcoin' into the public eye.
Trump's campaign promises such as 'establishing a Bitcoin national strategic reserve' and 'making the U.S. a crypto capital' will undoubtedly benefit the crypto asset market. As a crypto asset trading platform with 250 million users, Binance is sure to reap the benefits, and it has been making various preparations for compliant development.
The first favorable event for the entire crypto industry occurred on November 21, when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that its 33rd chairman, Gary Gensler, would step down on January 20, 2025. Trump will fulfill his promise to 'fire the current SEC chairman on his first day in office.'
Many of Gary Gensler's actions during his tenure as SEC Chairman severely cracked down on the crypto asset industry, including suing related companies for fraud and money laundering with fines in the billions. His enforcement actions target top crypto asset companies like Binance and Coinbase—SEC accuses these companies of operating unregulated exchanges and providing unregistered securities, which has been repeatedly rebutted by Binance and Coinbase in court due to insufficient SEC basis.
The new SEC chairman nominated by Trump, Paul Atkins, is the CEO of the consulting firm Patomak Global Partners, which has clients across the financial and crypto asset industries. Media analysis suggests that if Atkins takes over as SEC chairman, he may help formulate key regulations that Trump is passionate about for the industry, potentially ushering in clearer and more lenient regulatory measures for the crypto industry.
The SEC's lawsuits against crypto companies like Binance have hung over them like a sword of Damocles, and changes in management may bring a turning point for these lawsuits, with some companies already beginning to refute SEC's charges.
In the view of Binance CEO Richard Teng, Trump's arrival in the White House will mark the beginning of a 'golden era,' as confidence in the cryptocurrency industry surges, leading to a large number of new U.S. regulatory agencies adopting an open attitude towards digital currencies.
Analysts predict that as the U.S. includes Bitcoin in its reserves, more large companies and even some countries will also include Bitcoin on their balance sheets. Trump's promise to 'eliminate capital gains tax on Bitcoin transactions' will further favor this trend, potentially leading some smaller countries to follow suit, benefiting the development of the crypto industry everywhere.
A policy-friendly environment cannot be achieved overnight; Binance's choice is to continuously increase its investment in compliance while reserving resources for expansion.
As of October 2024, after Binance registered in Argentina, it achieved the global 20th regulatory milestone, obtaining licenses and registrations in 20 jurisdictions worldwide, including legitimate registrations in countries such as France, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Mexico, El Salvador, South Africa, India, and Argentina, covering multiple regions including Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, the Americas, and Africa. This ranks first in the entire crypto asset exchange industry.
Internally, Binance has invested a significant amount of effort, tools, technology, and resources to prevent risk contamination and protect user asset security. Throughout 2024, the number of alerts sent to users exceeded 15,000 daily, helping users recover $9.1 million in funds, with an average of 80 successful recoveries per month and total prevented losses exceeding $129 million, blacklisting 47,000 malicious addresses.
Outwardly, Binance has maintained communication and cooperation with law enforcement agencies in multiple countries. From January 2024 to mid-November, Binance's compliance team has responded to over 55,700 law enforcement requests, serving over 13,800 registered law enforcement personnel.
With sustained security and compliance reserves, Binance has welcomed synchronized growth with the global increase in digital asset adoption. In 2024, Binance user funds reached $21.6 billion, according to DefiLlama data, which is 36% higher than the total inflow of the second-ranked 10 exchanges ($15.9 billion). As of mid-December, its global user base has grown to nearly 250 million, with the growth rate of institutional users doubling compared to last year.
Data on user asset storage for centralized trading platforms
CCData shows that Binance has already become the first centralized crypto asset exchange with a total trading volume exceeding $100 trillion in 2024. This achievement highlights the platform's strong advantages in scale, liquidity, and user trust.
In 2025, the crypto industry will welcome a friendly environment in the U.S., a major region. Binance, which excels at seizing opportunities, is sure to grow in response, and its goal of 1 billion users will be accelerated in 2025.
Alpha adds 'shovels' BNBChain buries 'gold mines'
In 2025, another event worthy of attention is the growth of BNB Chain, which relates to the long-term value of the native asset BNB as well as Binance's layout in the decentralized Web3 world.
As Ethereum's innovative applications diminish while efficiency becomes increasingly prioritized, and Solana rises from the dead with meme coins, BNB Chain has continuously enhanced its scalability over the past year, achieving transformations from increased rate, enriched protocols to upgraded experiences, resulting in a significant increase in on-chain locked value (TVL).
In 2024, BNB Chain completed its transition to a single-chain structure, migrating the functionality of the BNB Beacon Chain to the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) and phasing out the Beacon Chain. Additionally, the scalability and storage capacity of the BNB Chain network have significantly improved through opBNB and Greenfield solutions, with the Layer 2 solution opBNB supporting a high gas limit of 100 million transactions per second, achieving 4,600 transactions per second (TPS), surpassing the benchmarks of Layer 2 solutions like Optimism on Ethereum.
Among them, BSC's high throughput capacity enabled it to process nearly 4 million transactions daily on average in 2024, an increase of 2.5% from 2023; while opBNB processed an average of 7.1 million transactions per day. At the same time, BSC's average transaction fee remains at $0.03 per transaction, competitive compared to Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Avalanche; while opBNB has reduced its average transaction fee to just $0.001 this year.
High performance and low fees have also directly upgraded the trading experience, leading to increased user activity. According to the BNB Chain 2024 Annual Report, by the end of 2024, the average DAU (daily active users) of opBNB is expected to reach 4.7 million, while BSC is expected to reach 1.12 million.
BNB Chain daily active data
Meanwhile, users are also flocking into the BNB Chain ecosystem with their assets. In 2024, the total locked value (TVL) of BSC achieved significant growth, increasing from $3.5 billion in January to $5.7 billion by the end of 2024, a growth rate of 62%. This achievement ranks within the Top 5 in the 342 chains recorded by DefiLlama, following Ethereum, Solana, Tron, and Bitcoin.
Noah proposed that the key elements for establishing a strong compliance program can be divided into two categories: one is technology and resources, and the other is culture. He believes that Binance needs to have strong technical defenses, including in-depth trading monitoring, secure infrastructure, risk management mechanisms, and a robust operational framework.
In 2024, BNB Chain made significant progress in enhancing its security framework, with total financial losses reduced from $162 million to $53 million, a decrease of 67% compared to 2023.
In terms of user experience, BNB Chain is also continuously strengthening its integration with external demands. For example, to facilitate affordable stablecoin transfers, BNB Chain launched the 'Gas-Free Carnival' program on September 19, 2024, exempting gas fees for transferring or withdrawing stablecoins like USDT, FDUSD, and USDC on the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) and opBNB, directly enhancing the use of stablecoins and the user experience across the entire ecosystem.
The on-chain hotspot in 2024 is memes. With the increase in AI meme and other AI concept applications on-chain, the on-chain hotspot in 2025 will likely derive from AI. For this reason, BNB Chain is already prepared, combining BSC's high throughput and low transaction costs, opBNB's rapid processing for real-time response, and BNB Greenfield's secure, decentralized data storage, to provide a robust platform for AI-driven applications.
This year, AI projects have seen significant growth on BNB Chain, with MyShell, Holoworld AI, Sleepless AI, ChainGPT, NFPrompt, DIN, and other projects attracting substantial user attention.
Additionally, on December 17, the emerging crypto project discovery platform Binance Alpha entered the showcase page for Web3 wallets. This is a new tool that will serve as a 'pre-listing token screening pool' before tokens are listed on the trading market, aimed at increasing the transparency of the listing process for tokens on Binance.
Binance co-founder He Yi stated in an X Spaces session on December 18 that due to the large traffic and concentration of hot projects in the BNB Chain ecosystem, BNB Chain ecosystem projects will be key observation targets for Binance Alpha. As of December 24, the total number of Binance Alpha projects is 38.
As projects on the BNB Chain continue to develop, they are bound to attract innovative projects to build on this chain. This also means that in 2025, users eager to mine on-chain can 'vote with their feet' on BNB Chain, similar to the 'DeFi Summer' of the previous cycle on BSC, where early investments are likely to become popular assets in the secondary market.
(Disclaimer: Readers must strictly comply with local laws and regulations; this article does not constitute any investment advice)
