Binance Destroys $26 Million Worth of Its Team's BNB Tokens

Binance, the world's top exchange by trading volume, says it has completed the eight quarterly "burn" of Binance coin BNB$623.30 tokens.

The exchange posted Friday that the burn – the industry term for destroying tokens – comes in accordance with its white paper and involved 808,888 BNB previously allocated to the Binance team.

The amount was worth around $23.8 million, Binance said, though CoinDesk found the total higher at $26.4 million at time of writing. At press time, BNB was worth almost $32, up 5.95 percent over 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

The burn transaction can be seen here and in the image below.

"Starting with this burn, Binance will relinquish the BNB tokens allocated to the Binance team and contribute this BNB towards our commitment to burning a total of 100 million BNB," said the exchange.

Binance indicated that the team's 80,000,000 BNB allocated tokens make up 40 percent of the total BNB supply.

In a blog post on the burn, the firm said the tokens had been allocated to "reward to the work they have put into building the Binance ecosystem."

"The eventual total supply of BNB will still be 100,000,000 BNB. The current total supply of BNB is 189,000,000 BNB, which means that 89,000,000 BNB still need to be burned," said the firm, adding:

"The team will burn off the 80,000,000 BNB team allocation first, and the remaining 9,000,000 BNB will be burned by Binance.com exchange."

CoinDesk reached out to ask if the team will in some way compensated for relinquishing the millions in BNB.

Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao said:

"Binance still earns revenues and is a profitable organization. They get paid in BNB, little by little."

CZ image courtesy of Binance