Ah, Binance. Many of us remember the original idea. Plenty of us decided to pass on the ICO, which has provided some of the highest returns of any investment in recent times.
ICO To King of Crypto
There
were plenty of good reasons to pass on the ICO. The only stated purpose
of the token at the time was that it would give you a discount on
trading. There was no reason to believe that Binance would suddenly
become a massive destination for traders.
Fast-forward a couple
of years, and Binance is many things. Binance is a launchpad for stuff
like the BitTorrent token. Binance is a decentralized exchange provider.
Binance is a blockchain. Binance is a cryptocurrency. And, of course,
at its heart, Binance is a reputable and widely used exchange.
Binance
has become such a presence in the space that some people even floated
the idea of rewriting history to thwart some successful attackers.
Changpeng Zhao could tweet the contents of his breakfast, and it would get retweeted a few hundred times.
Have we reached peak Binance?
The recent 7,000 BTC hack was a good exercise in how Binance operates.
The exchange was able to cover the loss with funds it had set aside for
this very purpose. However, the incident also demonstrated how reliant a
community can become on one institution in a short period.
Enough Binance
Binance shutting down trading put the brakes on thousands of traders.
Luckily,
unlike another exchange that once ruled the market, when Binance was
hacked, the price of Bitcoin didn’t immediately begin tanking. Instead,
Bitcoin acted as if nothing had happened.
Now Binance has announced it will ban US customers from its central platform.
Everyone should feel delighted to know the company is planning to launch a Coinbase competitor for US users.
Reportedly,
about 15% of Binance’s traffic comes from the US, which means they’re
gambling that people who’ve preferred their platform will go through the
motions to verify yet another account with them.
The regulatory gambit, as it were, is an effort to become a more legitimate enterprise, even as Binance goes deeper and deeper into the blockchain.
Recently, out of nowhere, Binance launched a blockchain of its own. Following that, the only logical thing to do was to launch its own stablecoin.
As exchanges go, only major, long-established ones have made an effort
at stablecoins. Gemini, Coinbase, Circle, and Paxos Standard have all
made stablecoin plays. Now here comes Binance.
Are we to expect its stablecoin to become the most widely used?
This
is where things get interesting. There’s no reason to believe that
Binance’s GBP stablecoin will be the most popular stablecoin for GBP,
let alone the most popular stablecoin. At this point, Binance seems to be looking for things to do.
In a few short years, it’s gone from an idea on paper to a full-blown
blockchain General Store, complete with its own currency.
Where does it go from there?
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