If you're wondering "What is Binance Coin?" it's probably because you've seen it ranked high on our list of top cryptocurrency performers over the past few months.

While Bitcoin and Ethereum are far ahead of other cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization, Binance Coin (BNB) has solidified itself as a major challenger to them this year BNB is a coin with the potential to truly become the "big three."

Binance Coin's impressive performance in 2021 has attracted many investors, but if you have arrived on this page with the intention of joining them, it is important to note that, more than any other coin, they are not immune from the volatile nature of the crypto market It is important to note that the crypto market is not immune from the volatile nature of the crypto market. Here's proof: the Binance coin doubled in price from early April to mid-May, only to fall back to its initial price just one week later.

In short, as with all cryptocurrency investments, you need to carefully consider whether you can afford to lose all your money if things start going downhill.

That said, Binance Coin is well worth a closer look, even if you just want to know what it is. Here is a complete overview of how its "burning" system works, its price history, market capitalization, where to buy, and the latest news surrounding both the Binance exchange and the coin.

To understand Binance Coin, you first need to know about Binance.

As the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange based on market cap, Binance typically moves about three times as much cryptocurrency on a daily basis as the next major platform. Huge.

Binance Coin (BNB) was founded in 2017 as an Ethereum-based token to give users the option to save on fees and to help fund Binance's expansion. However, as Binance's ambitions grew, the company relaunched BNB as a coin running on its own Binance Chain blockchain, allowing users to exchange old coins for new ones.

The BNB surged in value in 2021, thanks in part to Binance's own rising popularity and the growth of the broader crypto market, but also to Binance's aggressive coin "burning" schedule.

Currently the centerpiece of all of Binance's efforts, the BNB is used on the exchange to swap with other cryptocurrencies and pay transaction fees, for decentralized apps (dapps) that run on the company's growing Binance smart chain, for crypto payments via the BNB It can also be used on some external websites that support crypto payments via BNB. Users can also "stake" coins in their Binance wallets and receive rewards in the form of additional BNBs.

At the time of this writing, Binance coins are available for purchase at $343 per coin, down 50% from the all-time high of $690 set in May 2021. This is part of the overall market slump that has occurred over the past few days, with top coins such as Ethereum and Bitcoin also well off their peak prices.

Still, Binance Coin has jumped from a price of about $38 on January 1 to where it is today, and has seen incredible growth so far in 2021. Those who bought BNB earlier this year or even earlier have seen the most impressive rise of any cryptocurrency so far this year, barring wildcards like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.

Binance continues to grow as an exchange due to the growing mainstream interest in crypto, and moreover, its Binance Smart Chain is attracting more developers and thus more users. Meanwhile, Binance's quarterly results seem to have sparked coin prices and rewarded BNB holders. Recent reports that U.S. government agencies are investigating Binance may have some potential investors wary of jumping the gun, but 2021 has been mostly on the right track so far.

In terms of market capitalization, Binance Coin is currently valued at about $58 billion. This is not far behind Ethereum's $308 billion and not far behind Bitcoin's $760 billion, but considering that it was under $6 billion in January, the strides it has made this year are remarkable.

Each quarter, Binance takes 20% of the profits and buys up large amounts of BNB with the intent to "burn" or destroy the coin, thus reducing the supply.

This is seen as a key reason why Binance coins have continuously skyrocketed in value, and the quarterly burning of the coins has skyrocketed their value to date: In the latest burn, completed in April 2021, Binance burned almost 1.1 million BNB, which at the time of the transaction was worth $595 million.

As noted above, anyone thinking of buying Binance coins, or any cryptocurrency, should think carefully before doing so.

If you do decide to invest - as you should - Binance is the prime destination for buying and trading BNB, because as CoinMarketCap shows, Binance offers over 100 different trading pairs for BNB within the exchange. You should be able to trade anything you might hold.

If you are in the U.S., you should use Binance.US instead of Binance's main site; the Binance DEX decentralized exchange also offers BNB.

Some other exchanges, such as FTX, KuCoin, and Gate.io, also accept BNB, but you will not find Binance Coin on competing exchange Coinbase, for example.

That is not the case; Binance USD (BUSD) is actually a "stablecoin" (a coin pegged to a traditional currency) developed in partnership with Paxos, which also offers its own PAX stablecoin. BUSD is pegged to the price of the US dollar, so its price is always $1 BUSD is pegged to the price of the US dollar, so its price is always around $1, and it is 100% backed by US dollars held within US banks.

The BNB has risen dramatically in value since the beginning of 2021, while the BUSD is always at about the same price. It has stabilized as an intermediary for use in transactions and for switching between different cryptocurrencies.

Binance Smart Chain (BSC) is the exchange's blockchain platform for developers to create apps and services, running in parallel with the regular Binance Chain BNB can be used on both blockchains. The average user does not need to know all the fine details about how the Binance Smart Chain works, but it is worth knowing why it is important.

Essentially, the Binance Smart Chain is a smart contract platform that developers can use to launch apps for decentralized financial services, non-fossil token (NFT) collection, yield farming, decentralized exchange (DEX), and more. An alternative to ethereum and other blockchain platforms that offer smart contracts, it is growing rapidly.DEX, called PancakeSwap, is currently the most popular dupe in the BSC, with 24-hour trading volume of about $10 billion as of this writing As of this writing, the 24-hour volume has reached approximately $10 billion.

In April 2021, the BSC reported that daily trading volume had reached 4.9 million transactions. Increased adoption by developers will lead to more services and apps that will draw in users and more use cases for BNB, probably further driving long-term prices.