Illuminating Binance Statistics for 2023

On August 2, 2023, Binance’s 24-hour exchange volume totaled $9.23 billion, putting it far ahead of its two biggest competitors — Topcredit ($3.96 billion) and BitForex ($2.91 billion). The top ten for the day also included IndoEx ($1.59 billion), Coinbase ($1.39 billion), Pionex ($1.28 billion), CoinW ($1.21 billion), XT.com ($1.20 billion), and Bitrue and UPbit ($1.15 billion each).

Although still enough to put Binance ahead of all other crypto exchanges, the 2023 volume saw a 31.9% drop from the 2022 peak of $94.75 billion. Looking back, the exchange recorded a daily volume of $147.6 billion amid the global pandemic in 2021. That was an unprecedented 320% increase over the 2020 peak of $35.13 billion and remains Binance’s highest daily volume ever.

According to a recent news report, Chinese users traded $90 billion worth of cryptocurrency in May 2023 — accounting for 20% of Binance’s total global trade that month. This is all despite the fact that crypto was deemed illegal in China back in 2021. As of May 2023, Binance had 5.6 million users based in China, with 911,650 actively buying and selling various cryptocurrencies.

Seeing as it was founded in China before going global, Binance’s high total volume in the world’s most populous country isn’t that surprising. The popular crypto exchange’s two other largest markets are South Korea (#2; $55 billion in May 2023) and Turkey (#3; $40 billion).

Although the company doesn’t publish revenue reports, data provider CryptoQuant estimated that Binance generated $12 billion in 2022. A year earlier, Bloomberg published an analysis that put the company’s revenue at $20 billion in 2021. This would mean the company’s revenue saw a 40% year-over-year decrease in 2022. In November 2023, Bloomberg estimated Binance’s revenue for 2023 to be $7.9 billion — a 34.1% decline over CryptoQuant’s 2022 estimates.

Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, revealed in a recent interview that the company generates 90% of its revenue from trading. On that note, several independent reports suggest that Binance handled approximately $23 billion in trades during 2022 at a standard commission rate of 0.1%.

In 2018, the company established the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and started putting 10% of all transaction fees into the fund. The primary idea was to safeguard users’ interests and provide protection in case of security breaches or similar incidents, thus ensuring that all crypto assets stored on Binance are safe. As of January 2022, the fund was worth $1 billion, though its value would fluctuate based on the crypto market. For this reason, Binance also promised to monitor the size of the fund and top it up using the company’s own reserves whenever needed.

Hurun Research Institute’s Global Unicorn Index put Binance’s valuation at $20 billion in its April 2023 edition. This was enough for Binance to rank as the world’s biggest crypto unicorn — a private crypto startup valued at over $1 billion. The 2022 edition of the same report estimated Binance’s value at $45 million, meaning it lost 55.5% of its worth in only a year. Binance also no longer ranks among the world’s leading unicorns overall; just a year earlier, it was in sixth place.

Meanwhile, Binance’s US arm’s most recent valuation put its worth at $4.5 billion. This was in April 2022, following an external funding round that helped the company raise $200 million.

In 2023, Nasdaq named BNB the fourth best cryptocurrency to invest in, with only Bitcoin (#1), Ethereum (#2), and Tether (#3) ranking higher. Launched in 2017, the coin was initially worth $0.10. Six years later, in May 2023, its price stood at $324 — a massive 323,900% increase.

The Binance coin’s market cap reached $52.63 billion in April 2023 but has declined since. As of mid-September 2023, it hovered around $33 billion. BNB recorded its highest-ever market cap of $103.86 billion in November 2021. It was also the only time it crossed the $100-billion mark.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the Binance CEO’s net worth was up by $9.29 billion (or 73.8%) compared to November 2022. In July 2023, Zhao’s net worth was estimated at $50.4 billion, but the drop in the company’s annual revenue and Binance US’s recent legal woes caused a huge dent in his fortune. Still, with $21.9 billion as of November 2023, Zhao — also known as CZ in the crypto community — currently ranks as the world’s 75th richest person.

Writing on X (formerly Twitter) in August 2023, Changpeng Zhao announced that the exchange had reached 150 million registered users. This marked a 25% increase from June 2022, when the platform had 120 million registered accounts. Even more impressively, Binance’s number of users stood at 128 million in May 2023, pointing to a 17.2% increase between May and August.

While Binance doesn’t share any of its users’ personal data, a look at SimilarWeb reveals where most of the traffic to its site comes from. In October 2023, users from Argentina accounted for 7.49% of Binance’s web traffic, the largest individual share. Russia — which used to dominate the list — was now second at 5.25%, while Turkey was third at 5.24%. Looking at the list of Binance users by country, Ukraine (4.55%) and South Korea (3.75%) round out the top five.

Binance’s users are predominantly male, with women accounting for only 29.68% of visits to its website in October 2023. As for the average age of Binance users, statistics indicate that the majority (37.91%) fall into the 25–34 age bracket. Another 21.33% of Binance’s users are aged 35–44, whereas 16.38% fall into the 18–24 age group. Unsurprisingly, the number of users is proportional to their age: people aged 45–54 account for 12.77% of the user base, those in the 55–64 group make up 7.46%, and those aged 65+ account for just 4.16% of all Binance users.

This was an 11.2% increase from 894,300 visits the previous month. As for the gender makeup of Binance US users, statistics from October 2023 show it’s similar to the crypto exchange’s global site, with men accounting for 69.57% and women accounting for 30.43% of users.

However, there are some differences in the age distribution of users. Similar to Binance’s main site, people aged 25–34 (32.61%) and 35–44 (22.37%) are the two most represented groups. At 17.36%, the 45–54 age group is the third most represented among US users, while the 18–24 group ranks fourth at 12.98%. Finally, 9.68% of users are aged 55–64, and 5% are 65 and over.

With 677,226 downloads in 2023’s second quarter, Binance ranked as the second most popular crypto wallet in the US. The exchange-based Binance wallet finished behind Trust (#1; 695,946 downloads), a specialized Web3 wallet owned by Binance. Binance’s products also dominated the UK market in Q2 of 2023: the Binance app ranked first with 254,958 downloads, while Trust was second with 137,889. Meanwhile, with 602,870 new downloads in the US and 109,454 in the UK, Coinbase ranked as the most popular among Binance alternatives in both markets.

In June 2022, the company’s venture capital (VC) arm created a $500 million investment fund to support blockchain and Web3 projects. Binance’s VC arm provided backing for three security projects (Ancilia, Sanus, and Go+) and three more Web3 projects deemed innovative (Lifeform, StepN, and Hooked). The company’s achievements also included 14 newly approved mergers, 61 closed token venture deals, and the acquisition of Japan-based Sakura Exchange Bitcoin.

Binance Labs continued growing its portfolio in 2023, having invested $15 million in the Web3 gaming platform Xterio, $10 million in the DeFi protocol Helio, and $5 million in the Curve token.

These funds, donated through the company’s charity arm, helped provide temporary assistance to 15,000 Ukrainian refugees. It also established a crypto-based cash help program to provide essential financial services to displaced Ukrainians. Additionally, Binance partnered with local charities to help children and vulnerable people in Uganda, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Cameroon.

Binance Charity has also invested over $2.2 million to provide free Web3 training for budding programmers worldwide. The initiative, dubbed Binance Scholar Program, awarded 36,500 scholarships to leading Web3 courses in 2022, with another 30,655 to be granted in 2023.

Over the years, Binance has developed a large community of crypto experts and enthusiasts who regularly gather for online and offline events around the globe. The largest of these events, Binance Blockchain Week, had two editions in 2022 — one in Dubai and one in Paris. According to Binance, the two events had 3,000 in-person attendees and 1.5 million online viewers each.

In all, Binance hosted 739 events in 2022 — 480 online and 259 in-person. Most of these took place in Africa (213; 144 online and 69 offline) and EU countries (133; 81 online and 52 offline).

The company entered the NFT space in 2021; by the end of 2022, its NFT marketplace’s trading volume saw a 350% year-over-year increase. Throughout 2022, Binance partnered with many celebrities and luxury brands to promote its NFT products. These included boxer Mike Tyson, soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, and luxury watch manufacturer Franck Muller. Binance also announced the total sales of its “Mystery Boxes” — collections of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) whose contents remain unknown to the buyer until they open them — have reached 1 million.

Binance’s Web3-based streaming platform had 5.2 million unique viewers in 2022. Some of the most notable broadcasts included the live transmissions of Binance events and meetups, CZ’s speech at the 2022 Lisbon Web Summit, and several Web3 seminars. The platform also hosted four GameFi tournaments and was the official streaming partner for 15 other GameFi projects.

In its complaint, the SEC alleges that Binance isn’t registered to operate as an exchange in the US, but it still charged customers transaction fees and profited from it. According to the lawsuit, Binance, its US arm, and Changpeng Zhao earned $11.6 billion between 2017 and 2023. At the same time, they artificially inflated their trading volumes and diverted customer funds. Zhao and Binance filed a motion to dismiss the suit in September 2023, but the court case is still pending.

Binance US, prompted by the SEC investigation, halted all dollar withdrawals in October 2023 in case the court decided to freeze the company’s assets. As a result, US customers now have to convert their funds into other digital assets (e.g., stablecoins) to be able to withdraw them.

In late August 2023, Mastercard announced the end of its partnership with the world’s largest crypto exchange. This meant that users in Latin America and the Middle East would no longer be able to use Binance’s prepaid crypto debit cards. Although no reason was given for the end of Binance’s partnership with Mastercard, experts believe the SEC lawsuit was a major factor.

Over in Europe, Binance announced its debit card would no longer be available in the European Economic Area as of December 20, 2023. The result of a partnership with Visa, this debit card allowed users to convert their crypto assets into their local currency and use them to pay for products. Again, no reason was given for the abrupt shutdown of the Binance Visa debit card.

Although Russians are among the most avid Binance users, the company announced it would shut down its local subsidiary in September 2023, thus officially exiting the Russian market. In the announcement, it was revealed that Binance Russia was sold in its entirety to CommEX, a newcomer to the crypto market. In fact, CommEX was registered as a company merely a day before the announcement was made. This prompted speculation that Changpeng Zhao is the actual owner of CommEX — a rumor Zhao himself shut down in a post on X (formerly Twitter).