Binance burns $390M worth of BNB tokens

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance has completed its 16th quarterly Binance Coin (BNB) burn, destroying over $390 million worth of BNB.

On July 18, Binance reported that it had destroyed 1,296,728 BNB tokens valued at just under $400 million at the time.

The exchange noted an additional 5,163 BNB that were destroyed through its Pioneer Burn Program — an incentive that aims to help users who have lost tokens through honestly mistaken transactions to smart contracts.

Binance covers the losses, returning the tokens to users under specific circumstances. These token numbers are then deducted from the quarterly burn totals by the exchange.

Binance has pledged to burn 20% of the exchange’s profits every quarter, with the latest burn suggesting the exchange could have profited by $2 billion during the second quarter of 2021.

The latest burn is the second-largest in Binance Coin's history by fiat value, with a whopping $600 million worth BNB having been destroyed in March.

Despite the scale of the burn, the event appears to have had little impact on the Binance Coin markets, with BNB prices trending sideways over the weekend.

At the time of writing, BNB was trading down less than 1% on the day at $301.66. It is currently down 56% from its May 10 all-time high of $686, but is still up an impressive 700% since the beginning of the year.

Binance has recently been battling regulators on multiple fronts, with significant regulatory pressure coming from the United Kingdom, Germany and Hong Kong.

In the U.K., a number of high street banks have also curtailed their customers from transacting with the exchange as the country’s financial regulator clamps down on unregulated cryptocurrency trading platforms.

On July 16, Binance suddenly halted the sale of its stock tokens.