The world’s largest crypto exchange Binance has today burned 829,888 BNB—its native cryptocurrency—worth $15.6 million, according to a blog post.
Binance is not a public company but it claims it burns 20 percent of its monthly profits in its native BNB token, which it reports. So people calculate backwards to estimate profitability. This is its seventh quarterly burn as it sticks to its plan of burning 20 percent of its profits—implying that its made $78 million this quarter.
In its first year, Binance destroyed 7.5 million BNB, implying profits of $500 million—according to its regular reports. In total, so far, it has made profits of $728 million.
The burn takes Binance closer to its aim of shrinking the 200 million supply of BNB down to 100 million. Its supply now sits at 140,000,000 BNB, 60 percent of the way there.
When compared to last quarter, it destroyed nearly half the amount of BNB with a value that was nearly twice as great. This is because the price of BNB has rocketed in recent months, up 400 percent since December 2018.
Binance made more profits this quarter than in each of the two previous quarters. And it’s still managing to only pull in about half of what it earned during the height of the 2017 bull run—even though prices across the board have dropped by around 80-90 percent.
We wish for everyone to have a bull run.
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) March 7, 2019
"Overall, we are happy with our results for Q1 of 2019, and we continue to be extremely busy with building products for Q2. We have a full quarter of work ahead of us," said Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, in the blog post.
While Binance has been busy making profits, it's also been busy passing judgment. This week the exchange decided to delist Bitcoin SV, a fork of Bitcoin Cash whose biggest proponent, nChain chief scientist Craig Wright, it has suddenly taken a disliking to. The news understandably sent Bitcoin SV's price into free fall. The reason, says Binance, is because the token failed to meet its "high standards." We take this to mean, the spate of lawsuits Wright has filed against those claiming he isn't Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin—which has angered the crypto community. While Binance's growing profit margins is a good sign the crypto winter is over, the ease at which it can cast out currencies it suddenly doesn't like is a bad omen.