Binance launched in July 2017 and is the biggest cryptocurrency exchange globally based on daily trading volume. The idea behind Binance’s name is to show this new paradigm in global finance — Binary Finance, or Binance.

Changpeng Zhao is the founder and CEO of Binance. In 2001, Zhao joined Bloomberg as head of tradebook futures development. He spent four years with the company and later joined Fusion Systems as a partner.

Since 2013, Changpeng Zhao has been actively involved with blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. He became head of development at Blockchain, and in 2015 he founded BijieTech. In 2017, Zhao officially launched Binance, and he has been the CEO of the company ever since.

He Yi is a co-founder and chief marketing officer at Binance. She started her career as a TV anchor and presenter on China Travel TV in 2012. Later, in 2014, Yi co-founded OKCoin, which was the largest fiat-to-crypto exchange in China at the time. In 2017, she joined forces with Changpeng Zhao, and together they created the largest crypto exchange globally — Binance.

Binance is a unique ecosystem of decentralized, blockchain-based networks. The company has grown to be the leading crypto exchange in a number of countries, and their side organizations are attracting significant interest as well.

One of the biggest competitive advantages Binance has is its drive for development. While the company started only as a crypto exchange back in 2017, today, Binance has spread its services among numerous different spheres. According to the company website, its mission is to become the infrastructure services provider for the entire blockchain ecosystem.

Since launching the Binance Coin, every quarter, Binance uses one-fifth of its profits to repurchase and permanently destroy, or “burn,” Binance coins held in its treasury. On April 15, 2021 Binance burned a total of 1,099,888 BNB, equivalent to $595,314,380 USD worth of tokens. It was Binance’s 15th quarterly BNB burn and its largest ever in terms of U.S. dollars. The 16^th burn was on July 18, 2021, which was worth $390 million in Binance Coin price at the time of burning.

Initially, the Binance coin started as a traditional ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. Later on, the company introduced its own blockchain, and the coins started being issued from the Binance blockchain, secured by the Tendermint byzantine-fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus mechanism which enables a decentralized, trustless network to function even in the presence of malfunctioning or malicious nodes. Then in 2020 Binance Smart Chain was released which brought smart contracts to BNB.

Different blockchains have different ways of forming this consensus. Ethereum currently uses a mechanism known as Proof-of-Work (PoW), the original consensus mechanism used by Bitcoin. BNB, on the other hand, uses a method called Proof-of-Authority. PoA is a reputation-based consensus algorithm. The PoA consensus algorithm leverages the value of identities, which means that block validators are not staking coins but their own reputation instead. Therefore, PoA blockchains are secured by the validating nodes that are arbitrarily selected as trustworthy entities.

To be approved, they must confirm their real identities, invest money to prove long-term commitment and be equal to all other candidates, making PoA reputation-based by design. This means that participating in the blockchain is not free and open to the public, making the Binance Smart Chain closer to a federated or even private blockchain.

The difference between a federated and a public blockchain is significant. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum are open public ledgers, anyone has the ability to participate as a node or a miner without revealing their identity. Participants in the Binance Smart Chain are vetted and chosen by Binance itself which gives it absolute control over the blockchain. They decide who becomes a validator and they remove validators at their discretion. This requires the user’s trust that Binance will behave in their best interest. Should Binance decide to alter any aspects of the chain or ecosystem, it has the power to do so.

Since Binance Chain is using PoA, Binance can alter any aspects of the chain or ecosystem without anyone’s approval. But they did post their roadmap for 2021 of planned updates and which areas they will focus on for growth.

To achieve their vision, the Binance Smart Chain team aims to find different growth scenarios and work closely with the many projects under the BSC umbrella. Here are the four core missions that encapsulate how they aim to fulfill the BSC vision for this year:

• Strengthen critical infrastructure and services.
  We want to ensure that the network has top-notch security, that APIs and tools are easy to adopt, that cross-chain transaction, and that CeFi and DeFi are bridged well through Wallet Direct and other solutions.
• Build secure, trust, and holistic DeFi infrastructure.
  The solutions we build on BSC must satisfy institutional DeFi requirements, so that we can attract more real-world assets and use cases.
• Pursue mass adoption opportunities.
  Focus on the specific market segments such as gaming, community (fan) tokens, and more.
• Foster strong developer communities.
  Incubate and accelerate original innovations and high-performing developers.

The BSC team is employing a decentralized approach to the development of the ecosystem, leveraging projects, developers, companies, and other entities that created. “Our position is to match people. That is, we do not develop ourselves, but guide good and suitable projects to do it, and quickly verify the optimal model of growth through resources such as BSC, the acceleration fund, and Binance ecology and community,” a spokesperson from the BSC said.

As the dedicated utility token of the Binance exchange, the most straightforward way to acquire BNB coins would be to purchase them through Binance but that depends on your countries resitrictions. The original exchange supports the largest variety of trading pairs with BNB, and it also has the best trading rates for the coin but you can also find BNB on the following exchanges:

Binance (Binance.US if in USA)
Kucoin
FTX
Gate.oi
Poloniex
Bithumb

Still not sure which exchange to use? Check out Crypto Scholars guide on the top cryptocurrency exchanges and how to register for each one.

The most popular wallets for cryptocurrency include both hot and cold wallets. Cryptocurrency wallets vary from hot wallets and cold wallets. Hot wallets are able to be connected to the web, while cold wallets are used for keeping large amounts of coins outside of the internet.

Some of the top crypto cold wallets are Trezor and Ledger. Some of the top crypto hot wallets include MyEtherWallet and Trust Wallet.

Still not sure of which wallet to use? Check out Crypto Scholars guide on the top cold wallets of 2021 and top hot wallets of 2021.