Binance Coin BNB Sets All-Time High as Chain Volume Soars

BNB, the native token of Binance's BNB Chain, hit an all-time high of $710 yesterday. This rally in the BNB token seems to be linked to BNB Chain’s improving metrics along with the broader market witnessing an upswing.

At the time of writing, the BNB price has settled slightly and is trading for $707.89 after having gained 1.2% since this time yesterday, according to CoinGecko data.

The official Binance Twitter account celebrated the fact that the BNB token crossed the $700 mark for the first time since its inception as Binance Coin back in 2017.

Users congratulated Binance for achieving the feat, with many speculating that the token will hit the $1,000 mark.

“Amazing, $1,000 this cycle,” Crypto Rand, a popular Crypto Twitter trader, speculated.

And derivatives traders have taken note: Open interest in BNB perpetuals increased to $1.1 billion from $614 million in the past 7 days, according to data analytics firm Kaiko. This sharp increase in open interest indicates that derivatives traders are bullish on the future price action of BNB.

BNB Chain’s TVL (total value locked) currently stands at $5.83 billion, an increase of 10% in the past 30 days, according to DeFi Llama. The Layer-1 blockchain has witnessed a major uptick in its TVL, which has climbed nearly 68% since the beginning of the year.

Total transaction activity on the BNB Chain has jumped by 22% in the past 14 days, according to BscScan.

Despite the increased activity, the blockchain has a median gas price of just 1 cent. In contrast, Ethereum mainnet—which has long had a high gas price problem—has a median gas price of $1.70 at the time of writing.

On April 24, the 27th quarterly BNB Auto-Burn took place, which saw more than 1.94 million BNB tokens, worth approximately $1.37 billion at press time, get burnt. That means they’ve been permanently taken out of circulation.

More than a quarter of BNB’s circulating supply has been burnt, according to data collected from BNBBurn.

Further, the current upswing in Bitcoin’s price is helping BNB, as the overall market sentiment is positive.

Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trade volume, is looking to dismiss an ongoing $12.8 billion lawsuit brought on by Bitcoin Satoshi Vision’s investors in London, according to a report from Reuters.

The plaintiffs argue that the leading exchange engaged in anti-competitive behavior to delist BSV from its exchange, which caused a great deal of monetary loss to investors who held the BSV token.

BNB setting an all-time high indicates that investors are moving past the regulatory hurdles that Binance had to endure in the past few weeks.

On May 1, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao was sentenced to 4 Months in prison for violating money laundering norms.

Yesterday, US lawmakers signed a letter to US President Joe Biden urging the commander-in-chief to rescue Tigran Gambaryan, a U.S. citizen who is also a Binance executive.

Gambaryan has been detained by the Nigerian government on grounds of money laundering. The U.S. house members have refuted the claim as baseless and want Gambaryan’s immediate return, as they fear his life might be in danger.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.