Binance CEO's Message: Seven-Year Journey, Continuously Leading Financial Innovation in the Crypto Industry

Author: Richard Teng, Binance

In less than two days, our team and the global cryptocurrency community will celebrate Binance's seventh anniversary, which will also mark my first anniversary since taking over as CEO of Binance. By general standards, a company that has been established for seven years is often still in its early growth stages, an ambitious startup; however, in the cryptocurrency industry, a company that has been around for seven years and has maintained a leadership position throughout this period has become a seasoned veteran, thriving in one of the fastest-changing industries in history.

As Binance approaches its seventh birthday, it embodies both characteristics: it retains the curiosity, agility, and growth mindset of a startup while also possessing the wisdom and resilience of a veteran that has endured various crises and learned important lessons through difficult times. With over 210 million global users and still growing, we have gained immense trust, willing to embark on their cryptocurrency journey with us, becoming a force driving global financial freedom and inclusivity. This is where we stand today.

Current State of Binance Ecosystem Development

Whether from our first anniversary, second anniversary, or the upcoming seventh anniversary and all future anniversaries, Binance has always stayed true to its original intention: "User-centric" is the most important consideration in all our decisions; a hardcore work culture and a sense of ownership drive continuous innovation aimed at improving people's lives.

The past year has been familiar to Binance: a blend of challenging obstacles and exciting successes. Turning the page from past issues to a new chapter, along with leadership changes, we have seen signs of users regaining confidence through strong capital inflows and soaring new registrations, and we have remained strong and never stopped building the industry.

A key milestone this year is that our global registered user count reached the 200 million mark in early June. Among them are many users already familiar with digital assets, but there are also many newcomers to the industry who believe that Binance will open the door for them to enter the Web3 world for the first time. Each new user joining us means we are one step closer to digital assets entering the mainstream. We warmly welcome these new users and promise to do everything we can to ensure they feel comfortable and secure as they explore the future of finance with us.

More users mean Binance is holding more funds; earlier this year, the amount of user funds held on our platform exceeded $100 billion for the first time. Our user funds are still safeguarded on a 1:1 basis under the principles of security and transparency.

Infrastructure Driving Cryptocurrency Mainstream Adoption

To better support both new and existing users in exploring the world of cryptocurrencies, we provide a range of infrastructure, products, and services to meet any user's needs related to Web3 and cryptocurrencies. Currently, Binance supports 541 carefully selected digital assets and 2,632 cryptocurrency trading pairs. Our robust system is ready to handle a large volume of user activity. Binance's historical peak queries per second (QPS) — a measure of how many requests users send to our system and receive responses within a second — reached as high as 2.58 million. This figure indicates that Binance can smoothly handle a very large load when users need it most.

To promote the popularization of cryptocurrencies and financial inclusion, we continue to expand our product coverage, ensuring broader accessibility in the cryptocurrency space and providing essential financial services.

Our "Simple Earn" product line allows users to grow their cryptocurrency assets across 392 different cryptocurrencies, currently attracting over 8 million users to experience Binance's wealth management services. Payments are another major pillar for cryptocurrencies entering the mainstream; currently, over 24 million people globally use Binance Pay for secure and efficient domestic or cross-border transfer experiences.

In the current market cycle, another key force driving digital assets into the mainstream is increased institutional participation. Binance's unparalleled liquidity and market depth, along with products and solutions tailored to the strict requirements of professional investors, have attracted a significant number of institutions to join the Binance ecosystem this year: between January and June 2024, we witnessed a more than 36% increase in institutional user registrations.

Cryptocurrency education is also another important foundation for the popularization of cryptocurrencies. The total number of visits to Binance Academy has reached 43.6 million, enabling users to better understand the blockchain world and digital assets, allowing them to invest in cryptocurrencies in a more thoughtful and responsible manner.

Security and Compliance

Over the past seven years, we have made significant investments in regulatory compliance, and we will be even more resolute. We understand that strong compliance practices will play a crucial role in the maturation of the cryptocurrency industry in this new phase. We continuously recruit top talent, refine our systems and technologies, and work closely with many governments and regulatory agencies to obtain operational licenses and registrations. Currently, we have obtained licenses and registrations in 18 jurisdictions, ranking first among all centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.

Another area of focus for Binance is strengthening security cooperation in the digital finance sector. Our law enforcement training program has contributed to building the capacity of global law enforcement agencies to combat illegal activities related to digital assets through numerous online and offline courses. Between June 2023 and May 2024, the Binance team handled 62,800 law enforcement requests, with a total request count reaching 173,800. Each request processed has played an important role in investigating and prosecuting criminal cases, locating offenders, and recovering funds for victims.

To protect Binance users from potential security risks and other extreme situations, we maintain the SAFU fund at over $1 billion and will continue to do so. Earlier this year, we converted all SAFU funds into more trusted and transparent stablecoins, USDC, further enhancing the reliability of the fund pool and ensuring its value remains stable at $1 billion.

Looking Ahead

As we approach our eighth year of serving cryptocurrency users, we will steadfastly lead the digital asset industry into the next stage of development. With market and industry trends becoming evident, some of the forces shaping it are already well-known.

The institutionalization of cryptocurrencies, along with clearer regulations, will attract more large-scale investors and capital into this field. At the same time, the importance of retail users will not diminish, as the primary group of early adopters will continue to expand, drawing in more new users from new regions and demographics. They will require a more intuitive user experience, easy-to-understand cryptocurrency knowledge, user support, and continuous innovation — and that is precisely what Binance is here for.

With the trust and support of the global community, we believe that the hard work of the past seven years has laid a solid foundation for greater success, and the path to financial freedom and inclusivity will only widen. And this is just the beginning.