With less than two days to go, our team and the global cryptocurrency community will celebrate Binance’s seventh anniversary, which will also be the first anniversary since I took over as Binance CEO. Generally speaking, companies that have been established for seven years are mostly in the early stages of growth, ambitious start-ups; but in the cryptocurrency industry, a company that has been established for seven years and has maintained a leadership position almost throughout this period, Binance has become an experienced veteran in the industry, undergoing various development periods of survival and prosperity in the most rapidly changing industry in history.
Approaching its seventh year, Binance embodies the characteristics of both: maintaining the curiosity, agility, and growth mindset of a start-up, as well as the wisdom and resilience of a veteran who has endured various crises and learned important experiences in difficult processes. With over 2.1 billion global users, and still growing, they have given us tremendous trust, willing to embark on their cryptocurrency journey with us, becoming a driving force for global financial freedom and inclusivity. This is where we stand today.
Binance’s Ecological Development Status
Whether it’s our first anniversary, second anniversary, upcoming seventh anniversary, or any upcoming anniversary celebrations, Binance has always kept its original intention: “putting users at the center” is the most important consideration in all our decision-making; with a hardcore work culture and an ownership mindset, we continue to innovate with the purpose of improving people’s lives.
The past year has been no stranger to Binance: challenging challenges and exciting successes intertwined. Turning the page on past issues and moving towards a new chapter, as well as changes in leadership, we have seen signs of users regaining confidence in the strong inflow of funds and surging new registrations, we remain strong and never stop building the industry’s pace.
A key milestone this year is that our global registered user base reached the threshold of 200 million in early June. Among them are many users who are already familiar with digital assets, but there are also many new users entering this industry, they believe that Binance will open the door for them to enter the Web3 world for the first time, and each of their joining means we are one step closer to digital assets entering the mainstream. We warmly welcome these new users and promise to do everything we can to make them feel comfortable and safe as they explore the future of finance with us.
The addition of more users means that Binance is custodian of more funds. Earlier this year, the amount of user funds held on our platform exceeded $100 billion for the first time. Our user funds are, as always, held securely and transparently on a 1:1 basis.
Driving the mainstreaming of cryptocurrency assets
In order to better support new and existing users in exploring the world of cryptocurrency assets, we offer a range of infrastructure, products, and services to meet the needs of any user related to Web3 and cryptocurrency assets. Currently, Binance supports a total of 541 carefully selected digital assets and 2,632 cryptocurrency trading pairs. Our robust system is ready to handle a large volume of user activity. The highest historical QPS (Queries-per Second) of the Binance platform – a number that can be used to measure the number of user requests sent to our system and responded to per second, reached a high of 2.58 million. This figure indicates that when users need it most, Binance can smoothly handle a very large load.
In order to promote the mainstreaming of cryptocurrency assets and financial inclusion, we continue to expand the coverage of products to ensure greater accessibility in the wider cryptocurrency field and provide essential financial services.
Our “Simple Earn” product line allows users to increase their cryptocurrency assets in 392 different cryptocurrencies, attracting over 8 million users to experience Binance Earn services. Payments are another pillar of mainstreaming cryptocurrency assets, with over 24 million people worldwide using Binance Pay for secure, efficient domestic or cross-border transfers.
In the current market cycle, another key force driving digital assets into the mainstream is the participation of more institutions. Binance’s unparalleled liquidity and market depth, as well as products and solutions tailored to the strict requirements of professional investors, have attracted a large number of institutions to join the Binance ecosystem: between January and June 2024, we witnessed a 36% increase in institutional user registrations.
Cryptocurrency education is also another important foundation for the mainstreaming of cryptocurrency assets. The total number of students in the Binance Academy has reached 43.6 million, through learning, users can better understand the blockchain world and digital assets, and invest in cryptocurrency assets in a more thoughtful, responsible manner.
Security and Compliance
Over the past seven years, our commitment to regulatory compliance has been significant and will be even stronger. We are well aware that strong and effective compliance practices will play a key role as the cryptocurrency industry matures into a new stage. We continue to recruit top talent, continuously improve our systems and technology, and work closely with many national governments and regulatory bodies to obtain operational licenses and registrations. Currently, we have obtained licenses and registrations in 18 jurisdictions, ranking first among all centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
Another area of focus for Binance is strengthening security cooperation in the digital financial sector. Our law enforcement training program has contributed to building the capacity of global law enforcement agencies to combat illegal activities related to digital assets by organizing multiple online and offline courses. Between June 2023 and May 2024, the Binance team handled 62,800 law enforcement requests, with a total of 173,800 requests processed. Each request plays a crucial role in investigating and prosecuting criminal cases, finding criminals, and recovering funds for victims.
To protect Binance users from potential security risks and losses in extreme situations, we will always maintain the SAFU fund size at over $1 billion and will continue to do so. Earlier this year, we converted all SAFU funds into more trusted and transparent stablecoin USDC to further enhance the reliability of the fund size and ensure its value remains stable at $1 billion.
Looking to the Future
As we enter the eighth year of serving cryptocurrency users, we will steadfastly lead the digital asset industry into the next stage of development. As market and industry trends become more apparent, some of the forces shaping it are well known.
The institutionalization of cryptocurrency assets, coupled with clearer regulations, will attract more large-scale investors and capital into this field. At the same time, the importance of retail users will not change, as the group of major early adopters will continue to expand, attracting more new users from new regions and populations. They need a more intuitive user experience, simple and understandable knowledge of cryptocurrency assets, user support, and continuous innovation – this is where Binance comes in.
With the trust and support of the global community, we believe that the hard work of the past seven years has laid a solid foundation for greater success, and the path to financial freedom and inclusivity will only widen. And this is just the beginning.
