Binance is having a year to remember, with major announcements coming every few months which deliver more and more options to the end user. Its own cryptocurrency, BNB, experienced a notable uptrend at the beginning of the year with outstanding growth.
During the first four months of 2019, Binance Coin’s price increased by around 300%. The parabolic movement didn’t end there, as the cryptocurrency’s price reached an all-time high of $39.68 on June 22, having increased by a total of 566%.
Things went south from there, as BNB lost almost half of its value and is currently trading at around $22. This has happened despite Binance constantly adding new features for its users, whereas at the beginning of the year the only things which seemingly drove the price up were Initial Exchange Offerings (IEO) and the hype surrounding them.
Amid all this, it’s hard not to notice that Bitcoin, the world’s leading cryptocurrency, has managed to retain its value and substantially increase its market dominance.
As mentioned above, the price of BNB increased to $22 between January and April. One of the few seemingly fundamental reasons for the increase came in early January when the company announced a game-changing platform, Binance Launchpad. IEOs quickly became an extremely hyped way for startups to raise money, and Binance Launchpad quickly established itself as a standard-setting market leader.
Since Launchpad only allowed users to purchase the newly-issued tokens with Binance Coin (BNB), this created substantial demand for the cryptocurrency. Back in the day, IEOs used to generate massive returns, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to end in mere seconds, with millions of BNB used to buy newly-launched tokens.
This had an immediate impact on the price. BNB saw an all-time high price, reaching almost $40 in June, representing a staggering increase of upwards of 560%.
But things went south from there.
Binance continued to make announcements regularly. Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of the exchange, helped to spread the word by being incredibly proactive within the cryptocurrency community. But for some reason, investors weren’t having it anymore.
The company added margin trading options, allowing users to trade cryptocurrencies with leverage. The news kept coming, as Binance announced that it intended to launch localized stablecoins resembling Facebook’s Libra.
Not long afterward, Binance launched the so-called Binance Lending platform. This platform allows users to lend BNB, USDT, and ETC for a preset period of time for a certain annualized interest rate, potentially allowing them to earn passive income.
And if all of the above weren’t enough, just yesterday the exchange announced the acquisition of a crypto-asset derivatives trading platform, JEX. The company’s direction appears to be clear – offer everything that a crypto investor might need.
Despite all those efforts and groundbreaking projects, however, Binance Coin’s price has suffered continuously after its $40 run. As you can see on the above chart, since June 22, BNB has experienced a severe downtrend, plummeting to $21.14 on the second of September. This represents a 47.2% decrease from its ATH.
In other words, it appears that the fundamental factors for BNB’s price increase don’t seem to have come into play. Binance is seemingly doing everything right, and CZ continues to be as proactive as ever, but for some reason, this doesn’t seem to have brought any good news for BNB holders.
The largest cryptocurrency by market cap is having a solid 2019 as well. Since January 1, the BTC price is up approximately 180%. And fundamentally, Bitcoin is looking stronger than ever.
The owner of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), has received regulatory clearance and confirmed that it is on schedule to launch its physically-delivered Bitcoin futures trading platform on September 23. This move is intended to bring Bitcoin to institutional investors.
During tough times for the traditional markets due to trading uncertainties between China and the U.S., Bitcoin’s price remained stable and even had negative correlation. As such, investors saw it as a safe haven amid the collapsing traditional markets.
Bitcoin started the year trading around $3,700 and hit a 2019 high of almost $14,000. Even though its price is currently around $10,400, it is still up more than 180% year-to-date. Comparing both Bitcoin’s and BNB’s prices since their yearly ATHs, the former marked a more substantial decrease of 47% versus only 25% for Bitcoin, despite Binance’s many major announcements.
It’s also notable that BNB has been declining against BTC for the better half of 2019. Since April, despite all the aforementioned announcements, Binance Coin is down 54% against BTC since its ATH. It’s not just BNB, though, as other major cryptocurrencies have seen new lows in their trading against the market leader.
Bitcoin’s dominance rate has surpassed 70% for the first time in 27 months, further establishing the cryptocurrency as the market leader.
