Binance Coin Price History July 4, 2024

The price of BNB Chain’s (formerly BSC) native coin rose 50 percent at the end of 2021, but was significantly lower in 2022. For example, on July 4, 2024, a single BNB coin was worth more than $513.99 – a value that was very different from the all-time high of $600 in November 2021. Regardless, Binance Coin ranked in the top 10 most expensive cryptocurrencies in 2022. It is notable that BNB’s price increase in November 2021 coincides with a similar price change for Ethereum (ETH) – a cryptocurrency where BNB originally emerged in 2017 before forging its own path years later.

The story of BNB: From reward token in 2017 to ecosystem after 2019

As the name suggests, Binance Coin or BNB originally started as an extension of the trading platform Binance.com – the most used cryptocurrency exchange in the world. At first, it operated on the Ethereum blockchain network as an ERC-20 token, offering owners incentives such as reduced trading fees, affiliate rewards or a lottery ticket system (“Launchpad”) that allowed users to invest in new crypto projects selected by Binance. However, in 2019, BNB moved away from the Ethereum network and migrated to Binance’s homegrown blockchain: Binance Smart Chain or BSC (called BNB Chain since February 2022). Here, BNB started supporting a chain that initially focused not on hosting decentralized apps, but on high transaction speeds and the ability to handle large amounts of data.

DeFi and GameFi: the main segments for BNB

However, BSC made significant progress in 2021, partly due to traffic congestion and high gas prices on Ethereum, as well as growing interest in decentralized finance (DeFI) and NFTs. Similar to Cardano, Solana, and Terra, Binance Smart Chain consequently became a valid alternative to Ethereum: the BNB blockchain’s total value locked (TVL) within DeFi, for example, was only behind that of Terra and Ethereum in early 2022. Another area where Binance’s blockchain and token play a significant role is GameFi – or “play-to-earn” blockchain games powered by cryptocurrencies. Some of the better-known and most popular NFT games, such as Alien Worlds and Axie Infinity, run on the blockchain behind BNB.