BNB at ATH: The Result of Long-Term Structural Drivers

In a significant market development, BNB has shattered its previous all-time high of US$794, decisively breaking the key psychological barrier of US$800 to establish a new peak. This pushed the token’s total market capitalization to US$112B, making it the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency excluding Bitcoin and stablecoins.

Figure 1: BNB’s outperformance amid positive macro backdrop

Source: CoinMarketCap, Binance Research, as of July 23, 2025

This milestone distinguishes BNB as the only major cryptocurrency, aside from Bitcoin, among the top 100 by market capitalization with a history of over two years to achieve a new high this month. The powerful, five-week rally underscores a market consensus that increasingly views BNB as more of a blue-chip asset, second only to Bitcoin in the current bull cycle.

Figure 2: BNB is the third largest altcoin by market cap

Source: CoinMarketCap, Binance Research, as of July 23, 2025

Although BNB’s price has shown strong performance, sophisticated investors tend to focus beyond price alone, focusing instead on the broader risk-reward profile. From this perspective, BNB stands out among other major assets over a 5-year period, with a higher Sharpe ratio and a lower maximum drawdown.

Figure 3: BNB leads in risk-reward performance among major assets in a 5-year window

Sharpe Ratio: Measures how much return an investment earns per unit of risk taken

Max Drawdown: The largest percentage loss an investment experiences from its peak to its lowest point

Source: CoinMarketCap, Binance Research, as of July 23, 2025

As shown in Figure 3, BNB outperforms traditional market indices and other large-cap cryptocurrencies in terms of risk-return balance. Its 5-year Sharpe ratio reached 2.5, indicating that for every dollar of risk taken, the return was 2.5 dollars. This highlights BNB’s potential for strong returns alongside a comparatively stable risk profile.

From a capital flow perspective, this rally is also built on a healthy foundation. Unlike surges driven by short-term speculation, the Open Interest (OI) in BNB futures has not seen a commensurate spike. This indicates that the primary driver is new capital entering the spot market to establish long-term positions, reflecting genuine investor conviction rather than leveraged bets.

Figure 4: BNB futures Open Interest stood below 60% of its peak during BNB’s recent all-time high price

Source: Glassnode, Binance Research, as of July 23, 2025

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Deconstructing BNB's Intrinsic Value: The Utility Flywheel

BNB's value is not merely speculative; it is anchored by a self-reinforcing "utility flywheel" that spans both centralized and decentralized ecosystems. This creates a virtuous cycle where utility drives demand, which in turn enhances the asset's value and encourages further ecosystem development.

Centralized Utility (Binance Exchange): Within the Binance exchange, holding BNB may provide certain direct economic incentives such as trading fee discounts. Furthermore, participation in exclusive token sales on Binance Launchpad and new token farming opportunities on Launchpool act as strong demand sinks, continuously locking up supply. Binance also offers a suite of financial products, allowing users to earn yield by staking their BNB.
Decentralized Utility (BNB Chain): As the native gas token, BNB is indispensable for paying transaction fees on the BNB Smart Chain (BSC), the opBNB Layer 2 (L2) scaling solution, and the decentralized storage network Greenfield. This function, analogous to ETH on Ethereum, powers a vibrant ecosystem of over 1,300 decentralized applications (dApps). BNB also serves as a primary liquidity and collateral asset across the network's diverse DeFi landscape.Unlike typical blockchains that focus on a single function or architecture, BNB Chain has expanded into a multi-chain framework with the opBNB L2 and Greenfield storage chain. This so-called "One BNB" paradigm integrates these three layers into a cohesive ecosystem, ensuring seamless interaction between decentralized computing and storage. Therefore, the utility of the BNB token is naturally expected to be greater than that of tokens on blockchains with a single function.
Governance and Security: Validators stake BNB to secure the network and earn rewards, while any user can delegate their stake to participate in this process and earn passive income. Staked BNB also grants holders governance rights, empowering them to vote on network upgrades and protocol parameter changes.
Real-World Adoption: BNB's utility is gradually expanding into the real world, for example, by purchasing goods and services through Binance Pay or booking travel products on platforms like Travala.com. Although still in its early stages, this shows its ambition to connect the digital and physical economies. Additionally, BNB may be included in the treasury strategies of dozens of companies, with an adoption rate already exceeding that of Ethereum.
Token Burn: Unlike most cryptocurrencies that continuously unlock or issue more tokens, leading to a de facto increase in circulating supply, BNB uses an Auto-Burn system to reduce its total supply. After more than 7 years of continuous burning, 31% of the total supply of 200 million BNB has been removed, supporting its scarcity.

Figure 5: Nearly one-third of BNB’s total supply has been permanently burned

Source: bnbburn.info, Binance Research, as of July 23, 2025

The New Frontier: Corporate Treasury Adoption

Following the path forged by Bitcoin, a new wave of "BNB Treasury" strategies appears to be emerging among publicly traded companies. By issuing convertible bonds or making direct purchases, corporations are beginning to hold BNB as a reserve asset to enhance treasury returns, improve liquidity, and gain strategic exposure to the crypto ecosystem. According to Binance founder CZ, at least 30 teams are actively exploring this strategy. Below are several publicly announced examples.

Figure 6: Publicly Announced Corporate BNB Treasury Adoption Strategies

Source: Yahoo Finance, Blockbeats, Binance Research, as of July 23, 2025

These cases mark BNB's transition from a primarily retail asset to an institutional-grade one. Even with only a few public plans revealed so far, the total potential buying pressure already exceeds US$1.2B — a figure that represents strong market recognition.

For context, while the total amount of ETH currently held in public company treasuries is US$3.7B, this accounts for only 0.83% of ETH's total market cap. A US$1.2B reserve for BNB means that at least 1% of the supply has been recognized by public companies — surpassing ETH in this regard.

The long-term impact of this trend may be profound. Most directly, it creates a new, structural source of demand for BNB that is less correlated with retail sentiment or daily trading activity. These corporate treasuries are likely to become long-term holders, effectively removing supply from the liquid market. This could create a "demand floor" for the price and potentially reduce volatility in the long run. Furthermore, this trend greatly enhances BNB's legitimacy, positioning it as a viable, institutional-grade reserve asset alongside Bitcoin.

Future Vision: Web2-Level Simplicity, Web3-Level Control

The official BNB Chain 2025 & 2026 technical roadmap reveals its grand strategic focus, aiming to win the next stage of competition through improvements in performance, developer support, and user experience. Its overall goal is to "combine the speed and simplicity of a centralized exchange (CEX) with the freedom, access, and asset ownership of a decentralized blockchain. The vision is to create the next generation of high-performance blockchain infrastructure." In the short-term, it plans to achieve the following objectives, underpinning sustained growth and long-term value.

Performance Goals: Increase the block Gas limit from 100 million to 1 billion, increasing throughput by 10x to 1 GigaGas/second. Aims to achieve sub-150ms transaction confirmation times and a throughput of over 20,000 TPS by 2026. It aims to match or even exceed the performance of traditional financial networks like Nasdaq.
Next-Generation Layer 1 (L1) Architecture: Develop an upgradable virtual machine that supports large-scale parallel execution, surpassing current EVM limitations. Introduce native privacy features to support privacy for token transfers and smart contract calls, while providing compliance-friendly confidentiality. Build on-chain compute hubs to enhance processing power for large-scale Web3 applications, such as games and financial platforms.
Ecosystem Expansion: Support developers through Launch-as-a-Service (LaaS) and the BNB Incubation Alliance, providing tools, funding, and guidance. Collaborate with partners like Ondo Finance to introduce 100+ tokenized US equities, ETFs, and funds to enhance liquidity from traditional markets. Support AI-driven applications by combining BNB Greenfield's decentralized storage and Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) to promote data ownership and monetization protocols (like DataDAOs).

Key Trends and Catalysts to Watch

Regarding the future of BNB, investors should pay close attention to several key variables:

The Pace of Corporate Treasury Adoption: Will more public companies follow the example of Nano Labs and Windtree? The success of 10X Capital's planned listing may serve as a key indicator.
The Surge in On-chain Activity: BNB Chain led all L1s in DEX trading volume for most of 2025. By the end of June 2025, it recorded approximately US$369.2B in 30‑day DEX trading volume, with a peak weekly volume of over US$108B, outpacing Ethereum, Solana, and other major chains. If BNB Chain is able to maintain this momentum, it is poised to solidify a strong foundation for BNB’s value.

Figure 7: BNB Chain DEX volumes hit new highs, now leading all other chains with a peak weekly volume of over US$108B

Source: Artemis, Binance Research, as of June 30, 2025

Global Regulatory Dynamics: Progress in regulations such as Europe's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework and the U.S. CLARITY Act may bring both challenges (compliance costs) and opportunities (greater regulatory clarity).
Execution of the Roadmap: Can the development team achieve its ambitious targets, including reaching sub-second transaction confirmation times? Additionally, will the development and integration of real-world assets (RWAs) on BNB Chain progress as planned?

References

BNB at ATH: The Result of Long-Term Structural Drivers

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