BNB

BNB Chain

Exchange

Binance's exchange token and the gas token of BNB Chain: no new issuance, ~4.5% of supply burned a year.

Established, Binance-led v1.1 · as of 2026-10-20 · framework v1.13 Coinsight · all analyses
Bottom line

BNB has the cleanest supply story among large tokens: no new issuance and four quarterly burns that removed 6.20M BNB (~$4.4B) in the last 12 months. The overhang of 2023 is gone, with CZ pardoned in Oct 2025 and a US spot ETF trading since May 2026. The token still fell −33% in a year and sits −46% below its Oct 2025 ATH, between BTC and ETH. Its value rests on Binance: the exchange drives demand, controls much of the supply, and funds the burn.

Scorecard (1–5)
Project
Token performance
Tokenomics
Price
$740.33
+1.2% 24h · −4% 30d · CoinGecko 20 Oct
Market cap
$97.4B
rank #4 · FDV $97.4B
24h volume
$686.8M
0.7% of market cap
From ATH
−46%
ATH $1,370, Oct 2025
2026 YTD
−14%
$862.69 → $740.33
Burned, 12 months
6.20M BNB
≈ $4.4B · four quarterly auto-burns

The last 12 months

$500$1k$1.5kOct 25NovDecJan 26FebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDecJan 272025-10-28: $1138.2326$1,138 peak2026-01-15: $947.7031$9482026-07-01: $545.8641$546 low2026-10-20: $740.3069$7401All-time high near $1,3702Trump pardons CZ3Fermi: 0.45-second blocks4First US spot BNB ETF5Year low at $5466NewL1 chain unveiled7Pasteur hard fork live837th burn: 1.65M BNB9NewL1 testnet1038th quarterly burn
MarketGovernanceTechAdoptionProductTokenomicsUpcoming

Daily closes from CoinGecko, 21 Oct 2025 to 20 Oct 2026. The $1,370 ATH (13 Oct 2025) falls just before the window.

Key events
  1. 1
    13 Oct 25 All-time high near $1,370. BNB rallies to a record days after the 10 Oct liquidation crash, helped by short squeezes and treasury buying.
  2. 2
    23 Oct 25 Trump pardons CZ. Binance's founder is pardoned after his 2024 sentence; the 2023 $4.3B settlement terms still bind Binance.
  3. 3
    14 Jan 26 Fermi: 0.45-second blocks. Hard fork cuts BNB Smart Chain block times to 0.45 s.
  4. 4
    28 May 26 First US spot BNB ETF. VanEck's VBNB lists on Nasdaq, holding BNB with Anchorage as custodian, without staking.
  5. 5
    01 Jul 26 Year low at $546. Daily close bottoms at $546, −52% from the Oct 2025 peak, before a rebound from late August.
  6. 6
    08 Jul 26 NewL1 chain unveiled. H1 report outlines a new chain targeting >100k TPS and sub-second finality.
  7. 7
    25 Aug 26 Pasteur hard fork live. Three proposals under BEP-673 ship on BSC mainnet; users need no action.
  8. 8
    19 Oct 26 37th burn: 1.65M BNB. Largest burn of the year (~$1.2B) leaves 131.51M BNB in supply.
  9. 9
    Q4 26 NewL1 testnet. Stated target is a testnet by end 2026, mainnet in early 2027; dates may slip.
  10. 10
    ~Jan 38th quarterly burn. Next auto-burn, sized by the average BNB price and blocks produced in the quarter.

How a token swap flows through BNB Smart Chain

User
Signs a swap in a wallet

For example USDT to another token on PancakeSwap; gas is priced in BNB.

BNB Smart Chain
Transaction is broadcast

Fee is typically a few cents; the user must hold a little BNB.

Validators
Block in ~0.45 s

Staked validators take turns producing blocks; fast finality follows.

PancakeSwap
Contract executes the trade

Liquidity pool swaps the tokens and takes its own trading fee.

Fee split
Gas fee burned and paid out

A fixed share is burned (BEP-95); the rest goes to validators and their stakers.

BNB Foundation
Quarterly auto-burn

Separately, a formula-sized amount of BNB is burned every quarter.

BNB is paid as gas on every transaction and staked by validators; part of each fee is burned and none is newly minted. The big supply reduction, the quarterly auto-burn, is not paid by users: it follows a formula and is funded from existing BNB, so it does not measure usage.

Usage and adoption

BNB per 12 months (≈ Oct 2025 → Oct 2026)
Quarterly auto-burn (4 burns)
6.20M
Real-time gas burn (BEP-95)
~20k
New BNB issued
0
Still to burn to 100M target
31.5M

Auto-burns: 1.37M (15 Jan), ~1.57M (15 Apr), 1.62M (15 Jul) and 1.65M BNB (19 Oct 2026), worth ~$4.4B together. BNB has no block rewards, so issuance is zero. The real-time burn is an estimate from gaps between reported supply figures after each burn and from DefiLlama chain revenue (~$30–36k a day); its cumulative total is ~291k BNB since Nov 2021. At the current pace the 100M target is about five years away.

  • medium signal
    Chain fees
    ~$0.31–0.36M / day

    DefiLlama BSC snapshots, 2026. Gas paid by users; a fixed share is burned. Small next to the auto-burn.

  • strong signal
    Stablecoins on BSC
    ~$13.3–13.7B

    DefiLlama, about two-thirds USDT. Real money on the chain, much of it moving to and from Binance.

  • medium signal
    DeFi TVL
    ~$5.2–5.9B

    DefiLlama vs Crypto Briefing figures; neck and neck with Solana. PancakeSwap is the largest part.

  • medium signal
    Treasury and ETF
    515,544 BNB

    Held by CEA Industries (31 Jul 2026). VanEck VBNB trades since May 2026; holdings not sourced.

  • weak signal
    Auto-burn value
    ~$4.4B in 12 months

    Large and steady, but a Binance policy, not paid usage.

BNB's supply shrinks because Binance commits to burning it, not because users pay to burn it. Paid usage (fees, stablecoins, DeFi) is solid but modest; the better scoreboards are Binance's market position and the size of each quarterly burn.

Project

What it is
BNB is the token of Binance, the largest crypto exchange, and the gas and staking token of BNB Chain: BNB Smart Chain (EVM), the opBNB layer 2 and Greenfield storage.
Team
Launched by Binance (Changpeng Zhao and Yi He) in 2017. Yi He became Binance co-CEO beside Richard Teng in Dec 2025; CZ is described as a BNB Chain core contributor; Nina Rong leads growth since Nov 2025.
Technology
EVM chain with a small staked validator set. The Fermi hard fork (14 Jan 2026) cut blocks to 0.45 s; Pasteur (BEP-673) followed on 25 Aug 2026. Cheap and fast, but less decentralised than Ethereum.
Traction
DeFi TVL of ~$5.2–5.9B, near Solana for second place; ~$13.3–13.7B of stablecoins, mostly USDT (DefiLlama snapshots, 2026). First US spot BNB ETF (VanEck VBNB) since 28 May 2026; CEA Industries holds 515,544 BNB.
Competitors
Ethereum and its layer 2s, Solana, Tron for USDT transfers, and other exchange chains such as Base.
Key risks
Single-company dependence: Binance's regulatory status, its user flows and its BNB holdings drive the token. The 2023 US settlement ($4.3B) still binds Binance; the pardon is political and can be contested. The quarterly burn is a policy, not a fee.
Roadmap
H2 2026: double mainnet throughput again. NewL1, a separate high-performance chain (>100k TPS target, <1 s finality, no public mempool), aims for testnet by end 2026 and mainnet in early 2027. Next quarterly burn ~Jan 2027.

Token performance

1-year return (21 Oct 2025 → 20 Oct 2026, CoinGecko)
BNB
-33%
BTC
-25%
ETH
-38%

BNB fell more than BTC but less than ETH over 12 months. Over 3 years it is up about +250% (from ~$210 in Oct 2023, researched by hand and approximate), ahead of BTC (~+179%) and ETH (~+53%); 3-year figures are manual because the free CoinGecko API covers 365 days.

Range 2026
$546 low (1 Jul) to $948 high (15 Jan), daily closes; now $740 (YTD −14%)
12-month drawdown
−52%, from $1,138 (28 Oct 2025) to $546 (1 Jul 2026); −46% from the $1,370 ATH
Liquidity
$687M traded in 24h on CoinGecko, 0.7% of market cap; rank #4
Relative strength
−33% in a year vs BTC −25% and ETH −39%; +36% off the July low, closes above $627 since late Aug
ATH check ATH check passed. The $1,370 high (13 Oct 2025) came eight years after launch and is also the current-cycle high, so it is used as the reference.

Tokenomics

Supply
Started at 200M BNB; 131.51M left after the 37th burn (19 Oct 2026). Target: 100M, about 31.5M still to burn.
Inflation
None. No block rewards; validators and stakers are paid from gas fees only.
Unlocks
No vesting schedule left. New float comes only from large holders selling.
Utility
Gas on BNB Chain, validator staking, Binance fee discounts and Launchpool or airdrop eligibility, collateral on Binance and in DeFi.
Concentration
Binance, the BNB Foundation and CZ are understood to hold a large share; no audited breakdown is published. Treasury firms (CEA Industries ~0.4%) and the VanEck ETF add new holders.
Sinks
Quarterly auto-burn by formula (BNB price and blocks produced) plus BEP-95 real-time burn of part of every gas fee (~291k BNB since Nov 2021).

Bull case

No issuance and ~6M BNB burned a year shrink supply ~4.5% annually while ETF and treasury buyers add demand. If NewL1 ships on time and Binance keeps its lead, BNB can reclaim the $948 January high and retest $1,138.

Bear case

Most of the burn is a Binance policy, not usage: real-time fee burn is ~20k BNB a year. A regulatory hit to Binance or a large holder selling could push BNB back below the $627 floor towards the $546 July low.

Watch before the next re-run

  • Quarterly auto-burn size (next ~mid-Jan 2027) and remaining supply vs 100M
  • Binance regulatory news: DOJ monitor, US market access, pardon challenges
  • VanEck VBNB holdings and BNB treasury company buying or selling
  • $627 floor (closes since late Aug) and the $948 January high

Where to trade

Krakenlisted

BNB against EUR · USD · USDT · USDC

24h $1.53M · ±2% depth $1.03M

OKXlisted

BNB against EUR · USDT · USDC

24h $4.92M · ±2% depth $935.6k

Largest exchanges

Exchange24h vol±2% depth
BinanceBNB/USDT$77.7M$12.6M
MEXCBNB/USDT$15.5M$2.39M
GateBNB/USDT$9.50M$4.52M
HTXBNB/USDT$5.55M$332.5k
OKXBNB/USDT$4.61M$958.5k

Deepest DEX pools

Pool24h vol±2% depth
PancakeSwap (v2)BNB/USDT · BNB Chain$2.62M$1.93M
PancakeSwap V3CLBNB/BTCB · BSC$11.9M$1.13M
PancakeSwap (v2)BNB/other · BNB Chain$320.1k$893.0k

Pool size (TVL), fee tier and fee APR are not in yet: they need DefiLlama, which this setup cannot reach so far. CL = concentrated liquidity (higher fees, more impermanent-loss risk).

On-chain share of all BNB volume: 18.7%.

As of 21 Oct 2026 · CoinGecko tickers (24h volume, ±2% depth). ±2% depth is the money it takes to move the price 2% either way: the real size of a market. Exchanges ranked by volume among well-known venues; pools by depth. Not investment advice.

Where to follow

Official
People on X
Code and governance
Data