Binance: A Genius’ Passion – Data Driven Investor

Many people wanted a piece of the pie during the ICO craze in 2017 after learning about the attractive returns that could potentially be made in a short period of time. However, it felt that the playing field was not fair for the small players. Investors who have either pooled resources from a community or have their own large capital are given access to participate in the pre-sale with a huge discount offered by the team. It was risky to participate in the public token sale for the fear of being dumped on. Exit scams were also prevalent.

Since most projects issue their tokens on Ethereum, they can be traded on decentralized exchanges such as Etherdelta/IDEX once they were released. It is complicated for an average joe to navigate around a decentralized exchange, let alone trade on it if they have no knowledge on how transactions work on the blockchain. This resulted in many cases of fat finger errors where users paid way more than intended. Being able to provide a trading medium where there is a high amount of liquidity and is also user-friendly became a top priority. Many projects struggled to list their tokens on any decent centralized exchanges and left investors hanging.

Binance recognizes these problems and came out with an initiative of a launchpad where startups can leverage their platform to host token sales and are GUARANTEED a listing on the exchange. Not only does it solve the trouble of finding reputable exchanges for listing, listing on Binance means that the spotlight would fall on the project as it receives widespread publicity from the millions of Binance users and potential investors.

Binance also realized that the main problem of the 2017 ICO bubble was that investors were blindly investing in projects that were shilled by crypto influencers/celebrities and hence not doing their due diligence. In order for this to be a success, Binance has to ensure that the projects on the launchpad are of high quality. The responsibility of conducting thorough research now lies in the hands of Binance and their reputation is at stake. Binance’s show of support would offer visibility and credibility to any launchpad projects so it is very crucial that Binance follows a strict screening process in order to rule out frauds and scams.

It was a smart move from Binance to include BNB as the only cryptocurrency to be accepted in the token sales held on the launchpad, further driving up the demand and value for the token.

The ICO frenzy gave us an insight as to how sloppy teams are in administering their token sales. Initial Exchange Offerings (IEO) are quickly replacing ICOs and is set to become the trend for fundraising in 2019. Binance is the first to lead the charge in this new venture as the fundraising process for IEOs has clear advantages over ICOs. Everything from security/verification to the last step of token issuance is handled by the exchange and most importantly, there is a factor of trust among users of the exchange with the reputation that has been built with it.

All token sales held on Binance Launchpad has seen great success as it has managed to reach the fundraising cap every time with remarkable speed. As seen from the graph above, all 6 of the Binance IEOs has a 100% rate in providing huge positive returns up to this date. This performance by the IEOs has caught the eye of many investors in the crypto space and could be regarded as a ‘risk-free’ investment with great upside potential. This is the reason why every announcement of the next Binance IEO would spark an appreciation in the price of BNB. It is now conducted in a lottery ticket format and users looking to invest would want to increase their BNB holdings in order to maximize their chances of being allocated tickets for the participation of the token sale.

Binance has come out with several products with the goal of benefitting the crypto community and helping people in need, proving that behind the great minds lies a culture of caring. Let’s take a look at the products:

Binance Info

Binance Info is designed to be your go-to place to learn about your favourite crypto projects and has all the information that you need at your fingertips. It has a huge compilation of research reports from Binance Research and third-party agencies which covers a wide variety of cryptocurrencies.

The info page for each coin has a better user interface to navigate around and provides more information in a presentable way compared to Coinmarketcap. The section on social media platforms and news allows users who are interested to keep up to date about recent happenings of the project.

Research reports from various third-party agencies are featured on Binance Info where users can download a copy of the report to view in order to understand more about their evaluation of a project. The user could also take these ratings given by several professional research institutions as a reference to decide whether to invest in certain projects.

Binance Research

Binance put up a team that comprises of crypto enthusiasts from different backgrounds and experiences in data science, finance, blockchain engineering, etc. This is to facilitate the flow and transparency of the higher quality of content.

It is split into 2 types of research — Market & Project Research. Market Research consists of analysis and insights to the latest trends in the ecosystem such as Decentralized Finance (DeFi) as well as market developments/performance. Project Research delves deeper into the fundamentals of each project with the aim of providing investors with a comprehensive overview of the project.

To prove that Binance has done their due diligence and justify their reason for choosing a particular project to be on the Launchpad, they have released their own research report on Binance Research that interested investors can read about the project. This sets an example of transparency that Binance will continue to show in their upcoming IEOs.

Binance Labs

Binance Labs is focused on the bigger picture, helping to grow budding entrepreneurs in the blockchain industry by providing them with resources tailored to their needs. Binance’s form of support is not only through funding but also working with project teams to advise them on their strategies. With Binance’s vast knowledge and experience of the field, it would only benefit the project they have incubated going forward.

Binance Academy

Fear of getting into blockchain/cryptocurrency because it seems complicated at first glance? No worries, self-directed learning has never been easier with the introduction of Binance Academy. In its efforts to increase adoption, Binance believes that the first step is to lower the learning barrier by providing the public with free access to education. Articles which fall under the same theme are lumped together into a playlist so it would be easier for the user to explore all the informative content for that particular topic. Great news for people who aren’t visual learners, there is an audio file attached to each article which you could listen on the way to work or school!

Binance Charity Foundation

Binance Charity Foundation was built to showcase what blockchain technology can do for philanthropy. Donors are skeptical about traditional charities because it is difficult to trace the whereabouts of their donations and they have to trust that their money would reach the needy. Cases of corrupted executives pocketing donations do not help at all. This creates a situation where there are lesser trusted avenues for donation which results in the number of funds raised not realizing its fullest potential.

The main issue here is transparency of the movement of funds. Using blockchain technology to enhance the process of handling donations in a transparent manner, anyone can verify the transactions on the blockchain to check what the charity is doing with their donations. The property of immutability comes in handy as no one can alter the records.

Binance Charity launched its Lunch for Children Program starting in Jolly Mercy Learning Centre Uganda. This initiative is powered by Zcoin who pledged 24,000 USD to cover two meals a day for more than 200 students and school staff for the whole of 2019. The campaign aims to benefit 1 million people in the developing world with a blockchain-empowered donation system. This would eventually spread to more schools in Uganda and other countries such as Rwanda, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

With the quality of products that Binance is constantly churning out, I am looking forward to more innovative ways that Binance can come up with to help the community in the future! Let’s give our support in their efforts to bring the crypto space to greater heights!

Binance Chain

Binance launched its mainnet and performed a token swap for BNB from ERC-20 to BEP-2 on 23rd April 2019, migrating from the Ethereum blockchain to Binance Chain. BNB will be the native token on Binance Chain, used as payment for transactions on the network which increases the utility of the token.

With its own blockchain in place, the objective is to attract projects to issue tokens on Binance Chain and also allow Binance DEX to leverage the technology provided by Binance Chain. It has been stated that early projects who migrate over to Binance Chain will receive additional support from Binance as an exchange for their leap of faith. This is especially enticing for newer projects as the promotional benefits that come from Binance’s influence can greatly boost the market’s attention on the project. Binance Chain becomes another competitor to Ethereum and projects would have to decide which blockchain they want to go with by weighing the pros and cons.

Binance DEX

Decentralized exchanges should be the direction that the blockchain industry is striving towards. Centralized exchanges require users to deposit their funds before making a trade which means that the control over your funds is now transferred to a central authority. As the saying goes, not your keys, not your crypto. The management of the security behind centralized exchanges is very important as they are very susceptible to hacks due to a single point of failure. This is seen from the recent Binance hack where more than 40 million worth of BTC was stolen due to a data breach. Binance did reimburse users from their own pocket but in unfortunate cases like the infamous Mt Gox hack, those people have not even seen a single satoshi of their Bitcoin till this day. Know Your Customer (KYC) process is necessary for most exchanges as there is a higher withdrawal limit for verified users so exchanges also keep records of your personal data.

However, with all the risks involved, many still prefer trading on centralized exchanges when comparing the volume between the two types of exchanges. At its current state, decentralized exchanges would need the blockchain to scale properly in order to match the performance of a centralized exchange. They are still too complex for users to fully understand how it works and thus, less user-friendly. I believe this preference will change over the course of time and Binance wants to take a neutral stance on this matter hence the release of Binance DEX.

Binance DEX claims to be able to handle as much volume as Binance Exchange with one second block times for quicker processing of order matching. It allows users to control their own private keys since the exchange is connecting to your own wallet to access your funds for trading. However, it is not truly decentralized as all the node validators are controlled by the exchange. Users have complained that Binance DEX should not be advertised as a DEX when it is a non-custodial exchange. Binance CEO has addressed this concern on Twitter where the main intention was not about decentralization but to facilitate trustless trading without the need to deposit funds.

Binance DEX can only enable non-custodial exchange of assets that are limited to BEP-2 tokens since it is built on Binance Chain. This would deter users from trading on Binance DEX as they do not have access to assets with a high amount of liquidity such as Bitcoin or USD which would diminish the trading volume greatly. To make it available as a trading pair on Binance DEX, Binance issued a token on Binance Chain that is pegged to BTC (BTCB) and is 100% backed by Binance’s BTC reserves. USDSB is the first stable coin pegged 1:1 to the US Dollar issued on Binance Chain by Stably which created USDS and is backed by their physical reserves of cash. Now, users can purchase these tokens on Binance Exchange and trade it on Binance DEX as if there were a BTC and USD pair.

Ever since Binance stepped into the highly competitive realm of cryptocurrency exchanges, it has been relentless in its efforts to establish itself as the best trading platform out there. Binance has proven itself to be the cream of the crop with the speed that it is progressing and does not seem to be stopping at all, leaving other exchanges chasing on its coat tail. Exchanges are scrambling to replicate the success of Binance but none has even come close to what Binance has achieved in this short period of time — It is one thing to implement but another to execute. The astounding performance has also reflected in the price action of BNB, soaring from the initial ICO price of 0.10 USD to 32.10 USD, sitting at a current market capitalization of 4.5 billion USD. It is apparent that the overall value that people sees in Binance is attributed to the competence and professionalism that the team has shown since day one of launch.

Who’s the genius behind it all? The man who needs no introduction — The face and CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao. Many see the glory of him now but few knew about his past. He was born in Jiangsu Province, China. He has shown that he has a mature mindset since he was a teenager by working to help his family with household expenses. After majoring in computer science at Montreal’s McGill University, he went on to develop trading software for Tokyo Stock Exchange and Bloomberg Tradebook. He then quitted in 2005 and moved to Shanghai which he became a founder of Fusion Systems known for building some of the fastest high-frequency trading systems for brokers. He started to dabble in prominent cryptocurrency projects at the beginning of 2013 which includes Blockchain.info and held the position as a chief technology officer of OKcoin.

He made use of all the experiences that he has amassed from developing quality trading systems and advanced further into his blockchain career where Binance flourish under his superior leadership. He has slowly built up a good public image for himself with the daily interactions on Twitter and has always openly declared his support for cryptocurrencies which he took action by growing Binance to what it is today. Kudos to the Binance team who played an equally important role as well!

I will end off with a quote that I think best describes Changpeng Zhao,

“You will never be entirely comfortable. This is the truth behind the champion — he is always fighting something. To do otherwise is to settle.”
― Julien Smith, The Flinch