Buy BNB: value and price trends

What BNB is

BNB is the native crypto-asset of BNB Chain, one of the most widely used blockchain ecosystems in the world. It was launched in July 2017 as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, through an ICO in which 100 million tokens were offered to the public at 0.15 dollars each, and later migrated to a proprietary blockchain.

Today it is the native token of the BNB Smart Chain, a network compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine — meaning it can run smart contracts and decentralised applications written to Ethereum standards — based on a Proof of Staked Authority consensus mechanism, in which a limited set of validators produces blocks with fast confirmation times and low fees.

How it works

• Network fees: every transaction and every interaction with smart contracts on the BNB Smart Chain is paid in BNB, just as ETH is on Ethereum.
• Staking and network security: holders can delegate their BNB to validators, taking part in the mechanism that keeps the network running. Any rewards are variable and not guaranteed.
• Governance: those who stake BNB can vote on proposals for the protocol’s development.
• BEP-20 standard: BNB is the reference token of an ecosystem hosting thousands of BEP-20 tokens, DeFi applications, the opBNB layer 2 solution and the BNB Greenfield decentralised storage network.

The tokenomics: the auto-burn

A distinctive technical feature is the quarterly auto-burn: a portion of the supply is periodically removed from circulation in a scheduled, on-chain verifiable way, following a public formula, with the protocol’s stated aim of reducing total supply over time. This is a structural feature of the token, not a guarantee as to its value: the price of BNB remains determined by the market.

Origins and what to consider

The project was started by Changpeng Zhao (CZ), founder and for years chief executive of the exchange, with an initially straightforward goal: to give the platform a token for paying trading fees. The ecosystem built around BNB has since expanded its functions considerably.

In terms of its utility, BNB remains tied to the activity of an ecosystem attributable to a centralised operator: the corporate and regulatory affairs of that operator are a specific risk factor on top of the volatility common to all crypto-assets. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.