Binance's Ninth Anniversary: From a Grassroots Exchange to a Super Financial Platform

Original｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author｜Wenser (@wenser 2010 )

In 2026, the crypto industry enters its 17th year, and the exchange sector has reached its own "fork in the road" moment—will it continue to stay in its comfort zone, clinging to the crypto base, or will it adapt to the trend and join the wave of global financial innovation? As it stands, this is no longer an elective but a mandatory question.

The tide of the times is surging forward; internal industry competition can only lead down a dead-end path. Only by breaking outward and reaching global financial markets can the industry usher in a second spring.

In this regard, Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has shown the most decisive resolve. Its earlier move to list over 7,000 US stocks in one go was nothing short of a monumental industry feat. As a crypto giant boasting $53 billion in stablecoin reserves and a 57% market share, Binance is also re-exploring the industry's direction in its own way, searching for a new niche within the global financial system—a "super financial platform for the next monetary era."

From a grassroots crypto exchange founded in 2017 to today's global hub for asset liquidity, perhaps Binance has always been providing its answer to that industry challenge—In an era of technological explosion, how far are we from a world of financial equality?

Binance's 9-Year Journey: From Obscurity to Prominence, From Periphery to Center, From Single to Diverse

Today, after nine years of development, Binance boasts over 320 million global users across 180 countries and regions, with customer assets exceeding $128 billion. It is undeniably a top-tier monetary and financial platform in both the crypto industry and the world. But it all began nine years ago with an unremarkable grassroots exchange, born in the wild west of a nascent industry, stemming from repeated bold innovations and daring attempts to lead the sector. Looking back, Binance's development can be broadly divided into the following four stages:

Binance 1.0 Era: Pioneer in the Crypto Frontier (2017-2018)

On July 14, 2017, Binance officially set sail when the crypto industry was still in its primitive growth phase.

It is said that Binance's English name is derived from "Binary Finance" (Odaily Note: Similar to binary options, a simplified financial instrument where investors only need to judge the direction of an asset's price movement, without considering the magnitude), aiming to provide users with an efficient and low-cost crypto trading platform based on a native utility token.

At that time, it was the mid-to-late period of the crypto ICO boom, and the emergence of BNB became one of the iconic ICO public sales of the year. Crypto market exchanges operated in regulatory gray areas, with no unified market standards or user-friendly trading platforms within the industry; everything was in its infancy.

However, rampant "air coins," a spate of P2P defaults, and ICO chaos soon caught the attention of regulators. On September 4 of that year, a document from Chinese regulators triggered a wave of "crackdowns" in the crypto industry, causing a major crisis for many domestic exchanges.

Newly established Binance seized the opportunity amidst this industry turmoil, becoming the first to move its servers to Japan and embrace global operations, later relocating its headquarters to Malta. Within just a few months, Binance surged to become the top crypto exchange by trading volume.

The 2018 crypto bear market became a period of patient accumulation for Binance.

That year, Binance's user count exceeded 6 million. Investment arm Binance Labs (now Yzi Labs), along with Binance Academy, Binance Research, and the Binance Charity Foundation, were established. The ecosystem surrounding the Binance exchange gradually took shape with Trust Wallet and BNB.

Binance 2.0 Era: Builder of an Open Crypto Ecosystem (2019-2021)

After the major bear market of 2018, Binance entered a phase of rapid explosive growth.

In 2019, Binance successively opened channels for credit card deposits, expanded into European and American markets and the stablecoin market represented by BUSD, and launched the BSC ecosystem, further broadening its reach in global financial participation.

That year, despite a hack resulting in the theft of 7,000 BTC, the incident ended with Binance fully compensating affected users, thanks to its strong platform credibility and swift response. The crisis became an opportunity to validate Binance's reliability.

The subsequent launch of perpetual contracts and a DEX became key drivers for Binance's meteoric rise, attracting a flood of users, capital, and liquidity that fueled its ever-increasing trading volume. Binance then continued its momentum by introducing IEOs, Launchpad, Launchpool, DeFi staking, and Binance Liquid Swap, opening doors to wealth for BNB holders. Investments from Binance Labs (now Yzi Labs) began to gain recognition, with "Binance Labs portfolio companies" becoming a hallmark in the industry. The BSC ecosystem, driven by wealth creation opportunities, attracted more users, and global crypto KOLs and "Binance Angels" became super nodes of the Binance ecosystem, helping Binance achieve a milestone in January 2021—a monthly spot trading volume exceeding $1 trillion.

That same year, Binance founder CZ joined the ranks of the world's top ten richest individuals, with a net worth of $94.1 billion.

In four years, Binance grew from a single-function crypto exchange into an indispensable on-chain infrastructure of the crypto market.

Binance 3.0 Era: Embracing Crypto Compliance and Regulation (2022-2024)

Entering 2022, after the DeFi Summer, GameFi Summer, and NFT Summer, the crypto industry faced another winter.

The collapse of Terra, Luna, and UST, the downfall of Three Arrows Capital, the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, and the FTX debacle—suddenly, the crypto industry was treated as a pariah by traditional financial markets. External mockery and controversy had never been so intense.

Nevertheless, the unique resilience of the crypto market kept Binance moving forward. In October 2022, Binance's share of the global crypto spot trading market surged to 62%, still the undisputed industry leader. From that point onward, the demand for trust within the crypto market and among its users was no longer confined to the industry itself but gradually expanded to the global financial ecosystem.

This time, Binance was once again at the forefront.

In 2022, Binance became one of the first crypto exchanges to publish proof of reserves. In 2023, CZ, as Binance's founder, voluntarily complied with a US regulatory investigation, which concluded with CZ serving a four-month prison sentence and Binance reaching a $4.3 billion settlement with the US Department of Justice—the largest corporate settlement in US history involving executive criminal charges.

From then on, Binance, actively embracing crypto regulation, gradually entered the "post-CZ era." Co-founder Yi He and new CEO Richard Teng jointly guided Binance into a new era of compliance.

2024 was a major year for crypto mainstreaming. With the approvals of spot Bitcoin ETFs and spot Ethereum ETFs, Bitcoin finally broke through its previous high of $69,000. The crypto industry entered a period of competition for existing market share, and traditional financial markets and the crypto market began to accelerate their integration.

By the end of 2024, Binance's registered user count reached 250 million, cumulative trading volume surpassed $100 trillion, and annual revenue hit $16.8 billion, making it one of the most profitable financial platforms globally. Additionally, MGX, an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund investment company, strategically invested $2 billion in Binance, marking one of the largest single investments in cryptocurrency history.

For Binance, which has already hit the industry's ceiling, compliance is the final piece of the puzzle in its journey to becoming a global super financial platform.

Binance 4.0 Era: Super Gateway and Super App for Global Financial Assets (2025-2026)

Over the past two years, Binance has gradually unveiled its vision of becoming a super gateway and super app for global financial assets.

With the accelerated integration of traditional financial markets and the crypto market, RWA assets represented by US stocks, US-listed companies, and payment methods represented by stablecoins have become the investment choices and value benchmarks for more people. However, the world's 8 billion people face not only the barriers of asset certification thresholds and fiat currency circulation systems, but also the lack of a unified one-stop app for finance, daily life, investment, and payments.

This is precisely the direction Binance is now striving to break through. In June of this year, Binance officially opened trading for over 7,000 US stocks and ETFs, and subsequently directly supported on-chain trading of tokenized assets (bStocks), thus opening a new chapter in the global financial ecosystem.

First, Binance has achieved asset equality through "one account, multiple assets." An Argentine worker in South America, suffering from inflation, can spend $10 to buy US stocks. A digital nomad in Bali, Southeast Asia, can easily pay for coffee or a restaurant bill using cryptocurrency. A Muslim follower in the Middle East can freely trade crude oil and gold fluctuations. Eligible investors worldwide can participate in trading and using diverse assets. Latest data shows that within just one month, the assets under management for stocks on the Binance platform have exceeded $1 billion.

Second, Binance has achieved time-zone equality through "global, 7x24 hour trading." No matter which hemisphere, latitude, or time zone you're in, you can participate in trading, investment, and volatility of the most popular assets, truly offering "365-day, round-the-clock online access." The launch of the bStocks product fills the last major category of asset types on the Binance platform and opens the door for flexible movement of compliant global investment portfolios.

Finally, Binance has achieved risk control equality through "reserve mechanisms and AI-driven security compliance." For many, on-chain finance faces challenges and risks from hacker attacks, social engineering attacks, and asset preservation. Thanks to Binance's mature security and risk control mechanisms, user assets are tightly protected, and the AI security compliance system maximizes asset preservation capabilities. According to official data, as of 2025, Binance's AI security risk control system has cumulatively prevented over $10.5 billion in risk-related fraud.

Centered on AI smart applications and blockchain technology infrastructure, Binance has truly achieved a five-in-one integration: financial equality, quantitative equality, asset equality, time-zone equality, and risk control equality. Balancing the development of CeFi and DeFi, Binance today is an undisputed "one-stop financial application platform" and has truly become a global hub for financial liquidity.

Referencing official information, as the current ALL IN ONE "Super App," the Binance platform now covers the following four functional layers:

• Infrastructure Layer: Pre-IPO Perps, Stocks, Tokenized Stocks (bStocks), Spot, Futures, Margin, Options, Alpha, Wallet, Fiat Gateway, Loans, VIP.
• Community & Social Layer: Chat, Binance Square, C2C, etc.
• Growth & Earnings Layer: Earn, Launchpool, Megadrop, HODLer Airdrops, Simple Earn, Mining Pool, etc.
• Smart Application Layer: Binance Ai Pro, Binance Pay, Card, and other features.

Henceforth, over 320 million global users can handle merchant payments, friend transfers, investment trading, fractional share purchases, and financial earnings within a single account. And Binance's "super app journey" has expanded from crypto to the US stock sector, rapidly advancing towards its goal of 3 billion global users.

Conclusion: Answering the Questions of Our Time, Binance Steps Up

Nine years ago, facing challenges like "user trading, user experience, and asset variety" in the crypto industry, Binance provided its answers through step-by-step innovation and strategic maneuvers, rising to become the industry leader. Nine years later today, the questions before Binance are similar, but the user base affected has expanded globally. That question is: How can everyone enjoy the dividends of the era of financial equality and participate in the free flow of global assets?

Binance's answer shows both change and continuity. The industry environment, asset types, and financial ecosystem have changed. What remains unchanged is the unwavering focus on the user, the determination to break through past financial bottlenecks, and the creation of a new financial system that is open and empowering for everyone globally.

Leveraging its accumulated global market presence, native crypto technology, market credibility, and AI-native tech infrastructure, combined with the self-organizing ecosystem built over nine years with its community and ecosystem partners, Binance has moved from the periphery to the center of the era's stage, transforming from a grassroots startup into a global super financial platform.

Binance's next goal remains encapsulated in those eight words: Financial Equality, Empowering Users.