Binance Coin (BNB), the utility token of the Binance’s ecosystem, has surged by 15% today, hitting the price of $8 per coin at the time of writing, with a daily high of $8.5. The currency is also up by 15% against BTC, and 17% against ETH according to CoinMarketCap.
The sudden growth of BNB has brought the coin for the first time to the list of top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap, with a current market cap of $1.13 Billion. The coin currently holds the respectable 10th place, replacing Bitcoin SV.
Binance Coin has performed relatively well ever since its launch because it was created and launched by the largest crypto exchange in the world, Binance. It has seen a lot of use within the exchange, as using it provides benefits such as a discount on trading fees. However, the more recent reason for the sudden growth could be related to the fact that Binance Launchpad is back, with one successful launch from the past week.
Binance Launchpad is an initiative platform that enables Binance users to participate in fundraising for new cryptocurrencies that meet high criteria set by Binance analysts. The Launchpad has been around for a while, although it was inactive ever since the current bear market took hold over the crypto space in January 2018.
The Launchpad recently returned in 2019, with the launch of BitTorrent Token (BTT), which took place on January 28th. The crowd sale received massive amount of attention and demand and finished its rise within 18 minutes. The sale would have likely been over within seconds if not some technical issues with the platform which did not expect such a large number of eager investors.
While the initiative is supposed to hold one token sale per month, so far, only two coins were announced. The first one was BTT, while the second one is Fetch.AI (FET), with a launch scheduled for February 25th, 2019.
The return of the Launchpad was also taken as a sign that the ICO model still has supporters within the crypto industry. Meanwhile, investors have started purchasing additional amounts of BNB, likely to being used in the Launchpad’s future crowd sales, and the demand is already affecting the coin’s price.