Binance and its native token BNB both celebrated their ninth anniversaries this week, highlighting major milestones in user growth, expansion into traditional finance, and significant technical upgrades. Binance reported that its registered user base has surpassed 323 million across more than 100 countries, now representing roughly 43% of the estimated 741 million cryptocurrency holders worldwide. This is a dramatic rise from fewer than 6 million global crypto owners when the exchange launched in 2017.
The exchange also detailed its push beyond crypto. Binance now offers stock trading, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and pre-IPO perpetuals, with its traditional finance products generating over $80 billion in monthly trading volume since March 2026. Its direct stock trading service, launched in June, reached $1 billion in assets under management within 30 days and recorded more than $3 billion in cumulative trading volume. The bStocks product, providing tokenized one-to-one US securities with round-the-clock trading, surpassed $100 million in assets under management in two weeks, with 47% of its volume occurring outside regular US market hours. Cumulative trading volume across all Binance products now stands at $156.4 trillion, up from $145 trillion at the end of 2025, with an additional $11.4 trillion in the first half of 2026 alone. Institutional users grew by 9% over the same period.
“Nine years ago, we set out to increase the freedom of money globally. What we have built is infrastructure that works for everyone,” said Yi He, Co-CEO of Binance. Richard Teng, Co-CEO, added: “Expanding beyond crypto into stocks, ETFs, and tokenized securities is part of that same commitment.”
Meanwhile, BNB Chain marked the token’s journey from an ERC-20 asset on Ethereum trading at $0.15 to a native chain asset central to one of the most active onchain ecosystems. The network now records 450-millisecond block times and approximately 650-millisecond finality—roughly double the throughput from the start of 2026. The H2 2026 roadmap targets another doubling of mainnet throughput and a future Layer 1 built for more than 100,000 transactions per second (TPS). Over 65 million BNB have been burned from the initial 200 million supply, aiming for a final supply of 100 million. BNB hit an all-time high of $1,370 in 2025, and the chain continues to expand with opBNB for scaling and Greenfield for decentralized storage.
