BNB (BNB)
BNB ranks #3 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #4: 1 of the 3 assets ahead of it are not native coins but tokens or claims. A token is issued on a host blockchain rather than running its own; a claim stands for an asset already counted. Of the 1 non-native asset CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, 1 is a claim on another asset.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 70/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #3 |
| Rank counting claims | #4 |
| Market capitalisation | $88.5B |
| Price | $672.74 |
| Circulating supply | 131,510,858 BNB |
| Maximum supply | 200,000,000 BNB |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | PoSA (exchange chain) |
| Network purpose | Exchange chain |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Presale |
| Regulatory class | Contested |
Market figures from the 10 November 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)
A — 70 out of 100, provisional (from 10 of 10 sections, 10 November 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 67 to 73 (A to A).
| Section and criteria | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Consensus | 9.1 | average of 2 criteria |
| By leader (its largest chain's market cap) (Source) | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| By family (all its chains' market cap) (Source) | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Supply | 9.1 | the supply scale times 0.9, and a point for a fixed cap that holds |
| Supply (21 million scores 10) | 9 | fixed maximum supply of 200 million |
| Distribution | 5.6 | average of 3 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | – | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0 | 100% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. All 200M BNB were created by Binance at launch in July 2017 (whitepaper split 50% ICO, 40% founding team, 10% angel investors) and no BNB has ever been mined or minted openly; current supply after quarterly burns is ~131.5M (CoinGecko total = circulating, 2026-10-23; 133.17M after the 36th burn in July 2026), all of it from that genesis issue. source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 6.9 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 31% of supply sold. Binance claimed 100M BNB sold in the July 2017 ICO plus 20M to paying angels, but Forbes' on-chain forensics found only 10.78M BNB delivered to ICO buyers and 40M to angels (20M per the whitepaper plus a further 20M of unclear consideration), so sold = 30.78M-50.78M. Midpoint 40.78M / 131,511,776 BNB (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-24) = 31.0% (range 23.4-38.6%; Binance's own 120M claim would give 91%). Whitepaper: 100M BNB for a July 2017 ICO (target ~$15M) and 20M (10%) for angel investors who bought before the ICO. A Forbes investigation (reported by CryptoSlate) found ICO buyers actually received ~10.78M BNB (~$5M raised) and angels ~40M. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. BNB has no block reward or inflation: all 200M were created by Binance in 2017, BNB Smart Chain validators earn only transaction fees, and supply only falls through quarterly auto-burns and the BEP-95 fee burn. Nothing is issued, so nothing can be cut. source |
| Decentralisation | 2.4 | average of 4 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 0 | An authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: Validators halted the chain on 6 Oct 2022 after the Token Hub bridge exploit and shipped a release that blacklisted the attacker's addresses. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: BNB Chain (Binance-backed) maintains the reference geth fork bnb-chain/bsc and its new reth-bsc client, and sets the roadmap through BEPs. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 4 | Gated by election: a delegated set voted in by holders produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 5.5 | 45 active validators or block producers (source: Figment) |
| Security | 8.9 | 7.1 of 8 points source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | 10 | largest 7.5%, largest three 22.5% |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 10 | about 15,500,000 transactions a day |
| Hashrate (Own work 5, its power 1 kW 0 to 10 GW 5; 1 point) | 1 | not mined: another consensus, 1 |
| Clients (Separate code and teams 10, separate code or teams 9, a fork by the same team or a stale second 8; one client: a new version within 12 months 7, 24 months 6, none in 24 months 5, none in 48 months 3; a second in development +0.5, a second seen running +1, 8 at most with one client; chain ended 0; 1 point) | 10 | bsc (a go-ethereum fork, v1.8.2, Nov 2026) by BNB Chain and bsc-erigon (an Erigon fork, v1.4.3, Dec 2025) by NodeReal; BNB Chain's reth-bsc is experimental |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Scalability | 7.3 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.0008 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 10 | about 7,400 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 0 | a block every 0.45 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (24 MB or more 10: the ten busiest networks' median demand, 16.4 MB, and half again for growth) | 10 | 1.75 MB limit (converted from its gas, compute, mass or count limit), 2330 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 6.7 | 2 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✓ | BEP-126 fast finality makes blocks final about two blocks after inclusion, around a second at the current 0.45 s block time. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | bsc node: --history.blocks (formerly --pruneancient) drops old block data, alongside state pruning. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | No in-protocol light client for BNB Smart Chain; wallets rely on RPC servers. |
| Privacy | 3.5 | 3.5 of 10: whitepaper privacy 3.5 of 7, extra features 0 of 3, 1 not yet researched source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | Any secp256k1 key can hold and send BNB; the chain's account and transfer rules carry no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger (Separate outputs, change to a new address · Whitepaper §2, §9) | 0 | An account ledger: one running balance for each address, so the remainder stays at the sending address and its payments share one public history. |
| HD addresses (A new address for each payment, unlinked · Whitepaper §10) | – | |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | 0 | No confidential transactions in the protocol. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 0 | No protocol-level sender or receiver hiding. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 0 | bsc (geth fork) relays transactions directly; no Dandelion or built-in Tor. |
| Programmability | 8.9 | 8 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | BEP-20 (ERC-20 compatible) contracts on BNB Smart Chain's EVM, open to any account. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | BNB Smart Chain runs an EVM open to any account, with DEXs and lending on mainnet. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Through EVM contracts: multisig contract accounts and timelock contracts, as on Ethereum. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | EVM HTLC contracts (hash lock plus timelock refund) deployable on BSC. |
| Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim) | ✓ | Traded as itself, not as a wrapped token or a claim: THORChain. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | The BC-BSC cross-chain link ended with Beacon Chain's retirement under BC Fusion; remaining bridges are third-party. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | ERC-721 (BEP-721) contracts on BSC's EVM. |
| Demand | 6.6 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 46 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 8.5 | $204,996,805 traded in 24 hours; #17 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $175,349,843) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 2.4 | 0.18% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 5 | $27,047,642 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.03% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days; a lower bound: the books returned by 3 of them stop short of 2% |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 10 | $88B, at the top of the scale |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 9 | futures, options and margin positions 1.1% of its market cap |
| Wallet support (wallets that hold it, 10 or more: 10) | 1 | its own node and wallet, counted as 1: no wallet in the site's directory lists it yet |
| Record | 9 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 9 | 9 full years since 2017-07-14, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 9 | 4 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 483 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/bnb-chain/bsc); bnb-chain/bsc v1.8.1, 2026-10-16; 31 stable releases in the last 24 months. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | BSC v1.6.6, 2026: ported critical go-ethereum 1.16.8 fixes for two P2P vulnerabilities. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | Lorentz (Apr 2025) cut blocks to 1.5 s, Maxwell (Jun 2025) to 0.75 s, Fermi (14 Jan 2026) to 0.45 s; minimum gas price lowered to 0.05 gwei in 2025. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | Pascal hard fork, Mar 2025: EIP-7702 smart-account transactions on BSC. |
| Conduct (origin, claims, halts) | 9 | 2 positive, 1 negative source |
| Positive record | ||
| Launched with a stated purpose, not as a joke | ✓ | |
| No claims by its founders that contradict its own design | ✓ | |
| Negative record | ||
| Halt, freeze or reversal, 2022-10-06 | ✗ | BNB Smart Chain halted by coordinated validators after the BSC Token Hub bridge exploit minted 2M BNB; restarted hours later with a release disabling cross-chain transfers and blacklisting the attacker address. decrypt.co github.com |
Ten sections, weighted equally, each 0 to 10: consensus (the two ladders), supply (the supply scale and a fixed cap that holds), distribution (premine, fundraising, developer share, holders), decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes), security, scalability, privacy, programmability (what the scripting layer can do beyond the whitepaper's payment system), demand, and record (age, development, conduct). They are built from the criteria in the second table: privacy, scalability, security and decentralisation are the Cryptocurrency Standards among them, as follows: privacy (the whitepaper's three checks a base of 7 of 10, three extra features up to 3 more), scalability (four measures and three features), security (pool diversity, network activity, hashrate, clients and two checks) and decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share); programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) follows them, and supply and demand are two: the supply, scored against 21 million, and demand, the average of seven measures of the market and the wallets. Provisional: parts marked — are not yet measured and are left out of the average. A rating of structure and market depth, not a price forecast or investment advice. How the grade is built · Highest-graded cryptocurrencies.
Proof of Stake coins
Ethereum ETHA+
Solana SOLA+
TRON TRXA
Hyperliquid HYPEB
Cardano ADAA
NEAR Protocol NEARA
Avalanche AVAXAAll Proof of Stake chains →Proof of Work coins
Bitcoin BTCA+
Zcash ZECA+
Dogecoin DOGEA+
Monero XMRA+
Bitcoin Cash BCHA++
Litecoin LTCA+
Ethereum Classic ETCAAll Proof of Work chains →Supply
131,510,858 of a maximum 200,000,000 BNB are in circulation — 65.8% of the total that will ever exist.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 100% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 31% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Nodes or validators | 45 |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
All 200M BNB were created by Binance at launch in July 2017 (whitepaper split 50% ICO, 40% founding team, 10% angel investors) and no BNB has ever been mined or minted openly; current supply after quarterly burns is ~131.5M (CoinGecko total = circulating, 2026-10-23; 133.17M after the 36th burn in July 2026), all of it from that genesis issue.
Whitepaper: 100M BNB for a July 2017 ICO (target ~$15M) and 20M (10%) for angel investors who bought before the ICO. A Forbes investigation (reported by CryptoSlate) found ICO buyers actually received ~10.78M BNB (~$5M raised) and angels ~40M.
Binance claimed 100M BNB sold in the July 2017 ICO plus 20M to paying angels, but Forbes' on-chain forensics found only 10.78M BNB delivered to ICO buyers and 40M to angels (20M per the whitepaper plus a further 20M of unclear consideration), so sold = 30.78M-50.78M. Midpoint 40.78M / 131,511,776 BNB (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-24) = 31.0% (range 23.4-38.6%; Binance's own 120M claim would give 91%).
BNB has no block reward or inflation: all 200M were created by Binance in 2017, BNB Smart Chain validators earn only transaction fees, and supply only falls through quarterly auto-burns and the BEP-95 fee burn. Nothing is issued, so nothing can be cut.
Sources: forbes.es · forkast.news · forklog.com · coingecko.com · github.com · bnbburn.info. Researched 2026-10-24, low confidence.
What a regulator has said
Alleged an unregistered security by the SEC (2023 complaint); not named a commodity in 2026 and not adjudicated — status unsettled.
The regulator's position, reported as stated, not CoinSpectrum's. Assets nobody has ruled on are left unclassified rather than sorted by a guess.
How CoinSpectrum ranks BNB
BNB is #3 among cryptocurrencies and #4 in the market ranking, which lists wrapped coins, staked derivatives, stablecoins and tokens alongside them. CoinSpectrum counts an asset once, and counts only cryptocurrencies: assets with their own blockchain and their own consensus. A wrapped coin, a staked derivative or a stablecoin is a claim on something already counted; a token, memecoin or otherwise, runs on another chain's blocks. All of them are listed, each in its own section, and none is added to the total. The one place between BNB's two ranks is held by claims and tokens, not by other networks. The methodology sets out the rule and the counting rule argues for it.
The price above is the median of the exchanges the site reads live, checked every minute and cross-checked against a market snapshot (how market data is gathered). The grade is scored on published criteria, each with its source (the method). The site is independent, nothing on it is a paid placement, and its statements are signed (about CoinSpectrum, the manifesto).
See the 3 wrapped and staked claims on BNB →
Read on the site
- Fair launch or pre-mined · blog
- How CoinSpectrum ranks exchanges · blog
- Regulatory classes of cryptocurrencies: commodity, contested, security, unclassified · blog
- What a cryptocurrency actually is · blog
- What decentralisation means: seven questions, in order of importance · blog
- Which cryptocurrencies have a fixed supply? Capped and uncapped coins · journal
- Pre-issued and sold: when founders sell coins they premined · journal
- Where a DEX runs, and what it actually trades · journal