My crypto learning journey #9 – Binance Coin (BNB)
Founded in July 2017 by Changpeng Zhao ("CZ") and the Binance team, BNB was initially issued as an ERC‑20 token before launching their own blockchain in 2019. Since then, BNB has served as the native utility token for trading fee discounts and ecosystem services on BNB Beacon Chain and BNB Smart Chain.
Learning about BNB showed me how a native token can bootstrap an entire thriving blockchain ecosystem.
Supply & tokenomics: as of July 2025, there are 139.29M BNB tokens in circulation. However, there is no formal max supply; Binance conducts auto token burns periodically to reduce supply over time to 100M.
Use cases: BNB is used to pay exchange fees at a discount, participate in BNB Chain staking and governance, and fuel dApps across BNB Smart Chain (now BNB Chain), including DEXs and launchpads.
Analogy: BNB is like a huge battery that powers an entire city—including fuel discounts at its markets (Binance), governance, and the utilities (dApps) that run on BNB Chain.
