Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao has announced that the exchange team was allocated 40% of the 200 million BNB minted during the 2017 ICO.
In a Twitter post, Zhao stated that the exchange team would eventually burn all the allocated BNB tokens. The amount is almost 80 million BNB, equivalent to almost $37 Billion, and it will be burned instead of selling at a profit.
Crypto exchange Binance completed its initial coin offering (ICO) of 100 million BNB on July 21, 2017. All BNB tokens were created before the ICO and were sold within 20 days.
By press time, BNB was trading at $474, which has dropped by 10.20% over the last 24 hours.
The announcement by Binance comes after the exchange launched a blockchain network. The network aims to compete with ethereum for a share of the decentralized finance.
“It’s used on multiple DeFi platforms built on BSC that provide financial payments solutions. With the growth of BSC, more people are using BNB, and the more utility it has, the more value it gains,” Binance said.
Notably, the DeFi sector has been surging in the last few months, and the industry might boost BNB tokens further.