What is Binance?
Binance is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. Changpeng Zhao (CZ) and Yi He launched it in July 2017, and by January 2018 it had overtaken every rival. At its ninth anniversary in July 2026 Binance reported more than 323 million registered users in over 100 countries, and it says customers traded $34 trillion across spot and derivatives in 2025, including more than $7.1 trillion of spot volume.
The company is private, has no official headquarters and does not publish audited accounts. Its parent, Binance Holdings Ltd., is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, and since January 5, 2026 the main platform has operated under licences from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM). Richard Teng and Yi He run it as co-CEOs.
How Binance started
CZ was a trading-systems engineer long before he was a crypto founder. After studying computer science at McGill University he wrote order-matching software for the Tokyo Stock Exchange, built futures tools at Bloomberg Tradebook and founded Fusion Systems in Shanghai in 2005. He found Bitcoin in 2013, joined Blockchain.info and in 2014 became CTO of OKCoin, where Yi He had hired him. That same year he sold his Shanghai apartment to buy Bitcoin.
In mid-2017 the pair raised about $15 million by selling BNB tokens and opened Binance on July 14 as a crypto-to-crypto exchange built for speed and a long list of coins. In September China banned token sales and domestic exchanges. Binance moved its operations to Japan, then announced Malta in March 2018 after Japan's Financial Services Agency warned it was operating without registration. The result was a company with staff in many countries and no fixed home, which helped it grow quickly and later became its biggest legal problem.
How does Binance make money?
Most of Binance's revenue comes from trading fees. Regular spot traders pay 0.1% per trade, cut by 25% when they pay in BNB, and futures fees start at 0.02% for makers and 0.05% for takers, with lower rates for high-volume VIP accounts. Derivatives are the larger business because their volumes are several times those of spot. Around that core Binance earns from margin and crypto loans, Binance Earn yield products, token listings and Launchpool campaigns, P2P and card on-ramps, Binance Pay, OTC block trading and institutional custody.
BNB ties the system together. Holding it lowers fees and earns Launchpool rewards, and it pays transaction fees on BNB Chain. A quarterly Auto-Burn removes BNB from supply toward a 100 million target; about 133 million were in circulation in late September 2026, when BNB was the fourth-largest cryptocurrency with a market value of roughly $102 billion. It peaked near $1,370 in October 2025.
Binance revenue and valuation: what is known
Every revenue figure for Binance is an outside estimate. Fortune put 2022 revenue at about $12 billion. Bloomberg's billionaires index estimated $9.8 billion for the 12 months to March 2024, built from tracked trading volume and published fee rates. In March 2026 Forbes quoted Artemis analyst Zheng Jie Lim estimating $16 billion to $17 billion a year in 2024 and 2025, about two and a half times Coinbase's $6.6 billion.
Forbes valued Binance at about $100 billion at the same time and estimated that CZ owns roughly 90% of it, which put his fortune at about $110 billion. The only outside equity investor on record is MGX, the Abu Dhabi state-backed technology investor, which paid $2 billion for a minority stake in March 2025. The deal was settled in USD1, a stablecoin issued by the Trump family's World Liberty Financial, a choice that later drew questions about Binance's ties to the family.
Who owns and runs Binance?
CZ remains the largest shareholder but has not been CEO since November 2023. Richard Teng, previously CEO of ADGM's Financial Services Regulatory Authority and chief regulatory officer of Singapore Exchange, took over then. On December 3, 2025 Binance named co-founder Yi He co-CEO alongside him; the company describes her role as strategy and product and his as regulation and operations. Binance Labs, the venture arm she used to lead, was renamed YZi Labs in January 2025 and now works as a family office for CZ and Yi He rather than as part of the exchange.
The plea deal, the pardon and the regulators
In November 2023 Binance pleaded guilty to US charges covering anti-money-laundering failures, unlicensed money transmission and sanctions violations, and agreed to pay about $4.3 billion to the Justice Department, Treasury agencies and the CFTC. It also accepted independent compliance monitors. CZ pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program, paid a $50 million fine and served four months in a US prison in 2024.
The US mood then shifted. The SEC dropped its civil lawsuit against Binance and CZ with prejudice in May 2025, and President Trump pardoned CZ on October 23, 2025. Scrutiny did not end there. In February 2026 the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Fortune reported that Binance had dismissed or suspended internal investigators who flagged about $1.7 billion moving from two Hong Kong firms to wallets tied to Iran-backed groups. Binance denied wrongdoing, said the departures were unrelated and sued the Journal for defamation. In September 2026 Bloomberg and Reuters reported that federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the Justice Department's criminal division were examining whether Binance broke Iran sanctions. An investigation is not a charge.
Europe was a separate setback. Binance applied for an EU-wide licence under the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation through Greece in January 2026, then withdrew on June 24, days before the transition period ended. From July 1, 2026 it stopped taking new sign-ups, deposits and spot orders from EU residents and switched off Earn and staking for them, while keeping withdrawals open. The Wall Street Journal later reported that ECB President Christine Lagarde had intervened against the application; the Greek regulator denied the comments attributed to its officials. Binance says it will apply through another member state.
From crypto exchange to multi-asset app
In 2026 Binance began selling things that are not crypto. Its US stock service went live on June 1 with more than 7,000 US-listed shares and ETFs for eligible customers outside the United States, funded with stablecoins and executed through Nest Trading and Alpaca, and it passed $400 million in assets within a week. On June 12 Binance admitted bStocks, fully backed tokenized US shares issued by group affiliate BTech Holdings, to round-the-clock trading. Its pre-IPO perpetual contracts on SpaceX traded more than $2.1 billion in their first 18 days. Binance Research says emerging markets account for 77% of its users, and the company has set a long-range goal of three billion users.
Who are Binance's competitors?
Its closest global rivals in derivatives are OKX, Bybit and Bitget. Coinbase, the largest US-listed exchange, competes on regulated custody and institutional business and, unlike Binance, holds a MiCA licence, as do Kraken and OKX. KuCoin and regional leaders such as Upbit in South Korea compete for spot traders, and on-chain venues like Hyperliquid have gained ground in perpetual futures. With stocks, Binance now also overlaps with brokers such as Robinhood. Its answer is scale: Forbes put its share of global crypto trading at about 38% in early 2026.
What to watch
- Whether the reported Justice Department inquiry into Iran sanctions ends in charges, and how long the US monitors stay in place.
- A second MiCA application and a return to new EU business.
- Take-up of stocks, bStocks and pre-IPO perpetuals against established brokers.
- Trading volumes in a weaker market: the first half of 2026 saw total DeFi value locked fall 38%, according to Binance Research.
