Historically speaking, the evolution of a connection between cryptocurrency and blockchain technology tends to come far past the development of the currencies themselves, and goes more or less into the core establishment of exchanges as well. Similar to the default financial world that people who’ve delved into in the past are used to, exchanges exist everywhere for uses relating to converting currencies, to discussing and valuing stocks within the market under either a personal or professional level, it serves the core purpose of external accessibility that a bank wouldn’t otherwise be able to give due to existing laws and regulations.

Regardless, blockchain technology serves to open this avenue on a digital level, and one important figure in the scene that came to solidify an existing exchange in a decentralized network was a person by the name of Changpeng Zhao. Having perceived the ongoing developments of the technology dating back to 2013, and joining organizations such as Blockchain.info which is responsible for operating trade wallets within the network throughout the same time period, it is careful to say that his dedication improving transparency of financial data exchanges is more than appreciated by those existing on the network today.

Beginning in 2017, Zhao’s core goal was to create a cryptocurrency exchange that would assert a strong ability to trade currency under one particular pathway of application that is easily attainable. Thanks to the major increase in following towards Ethereum’s and its adoption to the new format of smart contracts that lifts censorship, Ethereum Classic, the additional use of standards such as ERC-20 helped to make sure that currencies could be transferred between multiple accounts while holding the ability to remain replaced or familiarized with other currencies all at once.

Since this applies to an exchange with how the Canadian dollar must match that of a value of say, a US dollar value, this was the perfect opportunity for Zhao to develop the perfect exchange that would make use of Ethereum’s protocols in order expand the network for those who were soon to enter the scene of standards themselves. This would begin in 2017, when major altcoins such as Bitcoin would also hold ease of accessibility to people who were looking to trade it relatively quickly on the go.

But of course, Binance would not exist today without its own, existing stablecoin, and the leeway it would give for clients who were seeking to exchange more of it on the network, hence the reason for the creation of the BUSD stablecoin and the BNB token. As I’ve carefully mentioned BUSD as a major example of a stablecoin, its initial purpose at the time was to match the equivalence of the US dollar, in order to be traded under the exchange with the asset of fiat money (or cash) behind it, which to this is largely seen under the NASDAQ stock market as well.

In addition to this, as mentioned earlier, the frontend introduction of the BNB token was solely meant to proceed with the payment eligibility within transactions, and to enable payment processes for merchants as well, hence coming to match the similar power of a stake owner under a particular application who wants to hold governance in order to increase their ability to perform a higher rate of transactions in a short span of time without spending energy or power in excess. Since this was the core currency to be used next to the purchase of stablecoins, which at the time by itself, were a relatively new concept at the time, this also brought the opportunity for investors to put their money into initial coin offerings as well, raising the overall market capitalization to 70 blllion$ over time as the BNB token itself was being sold at 0.10$ per token at the time being.

Regarding the greater speed of transactions, the use of the token would increase speed and efficiency within the exchange by long shot, by processing up to 1.4 million orders per second by the existing users trading their money. This of course, is possible due to Binance’s own running engine of a multi-tier system that is capable of holding so many secure users at once due to the Secure Assets Fund for Users (SAFU). Established in July 2018, this was an insurance fund by-law that allowed Binance to 10% of their earnings in trading fees from the spend BNB tokens to the fund itself for user protection and security, hence defining the term ‘governance’ on a different level.

Next to that, the earnings of Binance from trade fees and funding also helped to obtain other capital enterprises existing today as well, such as acquiring fiat-to-crypto platforms such as WazirX which remains as the most trusted cryptocurrency exchange in India, as well as funding their own diversification project by the name of Binance Labs which would extend their stream of acquisitions by investing into early-stage blockchain startups in order to drive the Web 3.0 ecosystem through funding strategies, mentorship opportunities, and general innovation.

As there are many more sides of Binance to be mentioned in further workshops, such as the various major wave of cryptocurrency scammers that tried to uphold Binance’s tradeability on other supposed websites that they did not permit to, one key incident at which governmental laws did not condone the otherwise legal activities that Binance was operating by was through the lawsuit that the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) had filed towards the exchange due to claims that Zhao was facilitating currencies to the public without authorization, and was initiating control over US customers by helping them bypass rules that they weren’t aware would come with severe legal consequences if not met with caution, these mainly being securities laws themselves by the US government.

This was later settled when Binance agreed to reclassify assets of the customers from digital tokens to commodities within the US on behalf of the government. Some aspects of this lawsuit are still ongoing, yet this particular suit was a question of BInance’s function within Western countries that was more or less controlled and overlooked by the Chinese government during their initial established offices in Shanghai.

It does not go without saying that, despite major regulations being imposed on cryptocurrency in certain countries, and its ongoing questions within the US due to the rapid development and expansion of the exchange in of itself, this all began through the proposal on a single idea which still serves a great purpose today. Of course, without Ethereum’s further developments in smart contracts and protocols, Binance would not have been able to make the entrance that it did thanks to the collaboration and sharing of data under the hood of a decentralized platform.