Binance. BNB Chain, Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain.
It can be difficult to understand what the Binance ecosystem actually looks like. In less than five years, there have been rebrands, spinoffs, and several changes in the company’s headquarters.
Let’s demystify it.
BNB Chain is a blockchain in much the same way that Bitcoin and Ethereum are. In fact, when it originally launched in 2017, Binance Coin (BNB) traded as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network before being spun off in 2019 with the creation of Binance Chain.
But how did we get there?
Binance was founded by Changpeng Zhao—commonly called CZ—(go ahead, friend him…. seriously) in 2017 and was originally headquartered in China. Since then, the company has shifted its headquarters to Japan, and later to the Cayman Islands, due to growing national efforts to regulate crypto trading activity around the world.
Five Years is an Eternity in the World of Crypto
Today, the Binance exchange is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by daily volume. In fact, last year, almost $8 trillion worth of crypto changed hands over the Binance exchange.
The Binance ecosystem, therefore, consists of the following:
- Coin: Binance Coin (Symbol: BNB)
- Exchange: Binance.com or Binance.us, depending on your location
- Blockchain: Binance uses its own distributed, digital ledger for recording transactions
As both an exchange and a blockchain, Binance has evolved into an open ecosystem with more than 350 other cryptocurrencies (130 in the United States).
How did Binance get so big, so quickly?
You know the expression, Time is money, which has been attributed to polymath Benjamin Franklin. Well, when Binance Coin originally launched in Ethereum, time and money were both problems. For one, transactions on Ethereum took longer. Time introduces risk, however, and while transactions could be sped up by adding gas, no one likes paying more.
In launching its own blockchain (BNB Chain, formerly Binance Smart Chain) and exchange in 2019, Binance added value by speeding up transaction times while simultaneously lowering costs.
Today, Bridge$ trades on BNB Chain as well because its low cost structure aligns with our mission to make the future of finance work for everyone. Now that you know the history of BNB Chain, you can learn more about the history of Bridges by reading the Bridges white paper, and start trading tokens today on Bridges Exchange.
