The Next Nine Years: Binance's Vision for the Future of Crypto and Blockchain

Author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

The crypto market in the first half of 2026 presents a rare split. Bitcoin has corrected over 35% from its peak, DeFi total value locked has halved to $72 billion, and several crypto companies that planned IPOs have hit pause. Based on historical experience, these numbers usually signal another winter.

But in the same half-year of price cooling, another set of data accelerated. The U.S. SEC and CFTC collectively released signals on U.S. crypto regulatory direction; a new SEC document clarified 16 crypto assets including BTC and ETH as "digital commodities"; the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) advanced DTC tokenization services, collaborating with over 50 financial institutions including BlackRock, JPMorgan, Circle, Ondo Finance, Robinhood, and other traditional finance and crypto institutions; stablecoin total market cap hit a record high of $322 billion in May, surpassing the foreign exchange reserves of 95 countries; global cryptocurrency holders reached approximately 700 million.

Prices are contracting, infrastructure is expanding. The two lines moving in opposite directions may precisely indicate that this industry is shifting from speculation-driven to infrastructure-driven.

Binance, launched on July 14, 2017, has accumulated over 300 million registered users in nine years, operates with licenses in more than 20 jurisdictions, has experienced the industry's largest regulatory penalties, and has witnessed the entire process from the ICO frenzy to institutional entry. At the nine-year milestone, a more valuable question than reviewing history is: where has this company placed its resources? What is the logic behind these judgments? To what extent can they represent the direction of the entire industry?

Where is the market of 3 billion people

Binance co-CEO Richard Teng repeats the same number on multiple public occasions: 2030, 3 billion users. This target is ten times the current 300 million registered users. According to Binance's growth curve, it took five years to reach 100 million users, another two years to reach 200 million, and the last 18 months to break 300 million, with an average daily increase of over 180,000. Growth is accelerating, but going from 300 million to 3 billion still means finding a growth engine of a completely different magnitude.

Where does this growth come from? Binance Research's stablecoin report released in July 2026 provides some clues. The report shows that among Binance's user base, 87% of fiat currency exchanges for stablecoins require paying a premium above the official exchange rate. The gradient of this premium precisely corresponds to inflation levels: users in hyperinflationary economies (inflation rate over 10%) pay an average premium of 62%, those in high-inflation economies (over 5%) pay 27%, and those in normal inflation environments pay 4%. The average premium for users in developed markets is only 0.3%.

What does a 62% premium mean? A user in Nigeria or Argentina is willing to pay 60% more than the official exchange rate to convert local currency into stablecoins. The driving force behind this behavior is wealth preservation. In an environment where the local currency is continuously depreciating, stablecoins act as a barrier-free dollar savings account, requiring no U.S. bank account, no foreign exchange quota, no minimum deposit.

Traditional fintech (M-Pesa, Mercado Pago, etc.) also serves the financial needs of emerging markets, but they offer local currency-denominated payments and transfers. When users' core demand is to escape local currency and obtain dollar-denominated savings and returns, crypto services provide products that traditional fintech cannot replace, such as dollar stablecoin savings, intermediary-free cross-border transfers, and 24/7 liquidity.

Willingness to pay a 62% premium to acquire an asset has nothing to do with speculation. In economies with currency depreciation, capital controls, and limited foreign exchange channels, stablecoins effectively act as borderless dollar savings accounts. The premium users pay is the cost they bear to preserve purchasing power.

Regional data confirms the scale of this demand. Stablecoin P2P transfer volume in Latin America and the Caribbean has doubled from 17% to 38% in the past year, becoming the fastest-growing region. On-chain value in Asia-Pacific grew 69% year-over-year, and Latin America grew 63%. Globally, about 700 million people hold crypto assets, accounting for 8.5% of the world's population, with India leading at 156 million, Nigeria at 45 million, and Turkey's per capita penetration rate reaching 25.6%.

Whether the goal of 3 billion users can be achieved still depends on many uncontrollable variables such as regulatory policies in various countries, competitive landscape, and macroeconomic trends. But at least from the demand side, there are still a large number of people worldwide facing local currency instability and insufficient financial service coverage, and this base is large enough. In March 2026, Binance's Asia-Pacific head revealed in an interview with Nikkei Asia in Tokyo that Binance plans to add five regulatory licenses in Asia in 2026 to prepare for acquiring this incremental user base.

The logic of 3 billion users holds only if there are still a large number of people globally whose basic financial needs are not met by the traditional system, and crypto services are filling this gap. To enter these markets, the first issue to solve is compliance.

The time window bought for $4.3 billion

In November 2023, Binance reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, paying a $4.3 billion fine, and founder CZ stepped down as CEO. This was the largest regulatory penalty in crypto history. The prevailing judgment at the time was that Binance's market position would be shaken.

More than two years later, the result is the opposite of expectations. Binance now operates with licenses in over 20 jurisdictions worldwide, with annual compliance spending exceeding $300 million and a compliance team of over 1,500 people. In March 2026, it obtained ISO 22301 certification. In the Asia-Pacific region, it already holds licenses in Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, and Thailand.

Binance's compliance transformation occurred during a special industry time window. According to the Atlantic Council's Crypto Regulation Tracker, only 42 countries globally had enacted or were advancing crypto-specific legislation in 2024. By 2026, this number grew to 68, an increase of 62%. Meanwhile, the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) will take effect in 2027, with the first 48 jurisdictions starting data collection from 2026.

When regulation shifts from hostile to framework-based, the value of compliance capabilities fundamentally changes. In an environment lacking regulation, compliance is a cost; in an environment with clear regulation, compliance is a barrier. According to Binance's 2025 year-end report data, the number of institutional users on the platform increased 14% year-over-year, and institutional trading volume rose 13%. According to Binance's VIP and Institutional Business Head Catherine Chen, as of May 2026, Binance's Crypto-as-a-Service platform had more than 15 large financial institutions connected or in the process of connecting. Additionally, Binance launched an institutional-grade off-exchange collateral program allowing eligible institutional clients to use tokenized money market funds (MMFs) issued by platforms such as Franklin Templeton as off-exchange trading collateral.

The prerequisite for this series of institutional businesses is compliance qualifications.

The $4.3 billion fine in 2023, in hindsight, bought a time window. While most competitors were still dealing with regulatory uncertainty, Binance had already established a compliance system capable of operating in dozens of legislative countries. The early cost is being transformed into a later access advantage.

Stablecoins: From trading tools to financial infrastructure

On the Binance platform, a change that has persisted over the past six years through all bull and bear cycles is the rising proportion of stablecoins in user assets. Among users holding at least $10 in portfolio, 30% allocate more than half of their assets to stablecoins. This ratio was only 4% in 2020. Whether during the 2021 bull market or the 2022 crash, this curve has not changed direction. The proportion among emerging market users reaches 36%, while developed markets have gradually risen from 14% to 19%.

This set of data challenges a long-standing assumption: stablecoins are just a transit station between trades. If users only hold stablecoins temporarily while buying and selling cryptocurrencies, the stablecoin allocation ratio should fluctuate sharply with price changes. In fact, it does not. More and more users are treating stablecoins as a long-term held asset in itself, similar to a dollar savings account with yields far higher than bank deposits.

Currently, Binance holds $53 billion in stablecoin reserves, leading the second place by $42 billion, with its share rising from 54% at the beginning of 2025 to 57%. The formation of this concentration has multiple reasons, including liquidity depth attracting traders, Earn products (cumulatively distributing $1.2 billion in returns to stablecoin holders) retaining savings-type users, and abundant trading pairs reducing the motivation to migrate to other platforms. No single factor can explain it; it is the result of multiple product links working together.

After BUSD was discontinued in 2023, Binance abandoned the route of a single proprietary stablecoin and shifted to an open multi-stablecoin ecosystem, integrating FDUSD, Circle's native USDC, World Liberty Financial's USD1, and others. Among the six fastest-growing stablecoins in 2026, four are primarily circulated on Binance and BNB Chain. 97% of USYC's supply is on BNB Chain, 95% of United Stable (U) is in the Binance ecosystem, and 87% of USD1 is on Binance and BNB Chain. These stablecoins choose the Binance ecosystem as their main battlefield, with liquidity depth and user base being core considerations. Binance's commercial value as a distribution channel continues to attract new issuers.

From an industry perspective, the scale of stablecoins has far exceeded the needs of crypto trading itself. According to Visa's on-chain analysis team, the adjusted monthly stablecoin transaction volume in June 2026 reached $1.79 trillion, with a total of approximately $8.82 trillion in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 125%. Every weekend, during the 60 hours when traditional financial markets are closed, stablecoin transfer activity averages $76 billion, or about $38 billion per day, on par with Visa's daily transaction volume. This shows that stablecoins have been embedded in financial workflows not constrained by traditional market hours.

A more cutting-edge signal comes from AI agent payments, currently very small in scale but worth noting. The median payment amount for AI agents on the x402 protocol is only $0.34, and the number of merchants grew fourfold in 2026 to over 7,500. AI agents cannot open bank accounts or complete identity verification, and the permissionless nature of stablecoins makes them a natural option for machine-to-machine micropayments.

RWA is another growth line beyond stablecoins. The total on-chain RWA value reached approximately $31 to $33.5 billion (excluding stablecoins), nearly tripling in one year. DTCC began production testing of tokenized securities with over 50 institutions in July. BCG and Standard Chartered predict the RWA market will reach $16 trillion by 2030. Binance accounts for about 60% of CEX RWA trading volume on the exchange side, and BNB Chain has onboarded institutional-grade products such as BlackRock BUIDL, Franklin Templeton BENJI, and VanEck VBILL.

The growth of both stablecoins and RWA depends on the carrying capacity of the underlying infrastructure. For Binance, this means BNB Chain needs to keep pace with business expansion.

Infrastructure Catch-up and Financial Super Gateway

Traditional financial institutions spend over $2 billion annually on advanced order management systems, while the entire crypto industry's corresponding investment is only about $185 million. This gap is reflected in risk control systems, clearing efficiency, custody security, compliance reporting, and other areas. As institutional capital accelerates its entry, the maturity of infrastructure will directly determine which platforms can accommodate these funds.

BNB Chain is Binance's core investment direction at the infrastructure level. In the first half of 2026, BSC completed multiple performance upgrades, including reducing block interval from 750ms to 450ms, lowering memory finality time from 1125ms to 650ms, and increasing baseline throughput from about 2800 TPS to about 5200 TPS. According to its released technical roadmap for the second half of 2026, BNB Chain plans to double BSC mainnet throughput again and develop a next-generation Layer 1 architecture for the next decade.

In practical usage, BNB Chain processes an average of 10 million stablecoin transactions daily, with 15 million monthly active stablecoin addresses. Since 2025, it has processed a cumulative 5.3 billion stablecoin transactions, accounting for 24% of the global total by transaction count, ranking first. Monthly active addresses grew nearly 30% year-on-year in 2026.

Additionally, Binance Pay covers 21 million registered merchants, with monthly transaction volume up 114% year-on-year, and stablecoins account for 98% of total payment volume. The median payment amount rose from $10 in 2025 to $18 in 2026. The change from $10 to $18 is modest, but considering that early stablecoin payments were mainly for top-ups and small tests, the increase may indicate more daily consumption and commercial transactions are being completed through this channel.

In terms of expanding trading categories, Binance is testing the feasibility of carrying traditional financial assets on crypto rails. TradFi-Perps started from a near-zero base in early 2026 and exceeded $1.1 trillion in cumulative trading volume within five months, accounting for about 11% of perpetual contract volume. Binance holds over $500 billion in trading volume in this category, with a market share of about 47%. This data shows that users indeed have demand for gaining exposure to traditional financial assets through crypto rails, and the scale is significant.

Currently, Binance has listed over 7,000 US stocks and ETFs with zero commission trading, allowing purchases of fractional shares for as little as $5. On-chain tokenized securities products like bStocks go a step further, turning stocks held by users from equity records in brokerage accounts into on-chain verifiable tokenized assets.

The distance from derivatives to spot tokenization is larger than it appears. Perpetual contracts are essentially price exposure tools and do not involve true ownership of the underlying asset. Tokenized stocks, on the other hand, require solving a series of issues including securities legal frameworks, cross-border custody, investor protection, and tax compliance. These issues are mainly at the legal and regulatory level, and progress depends on the attitudes of various jurisdictions.

Within less than a month of bStocks' launch, the number of tokenized stock assets increased from 5 to 25, with on-chain market capitalization approaching $300 million. Interestingly, among 190,417 bStocks users, 2,806 participated in cross-market arbitrage, of which 206 systematic arbitrage users contributed $198.2 million in fast-matching volume, accounting for 96.5% of related trading volume.

Moreover, bStocks is particularly attractive during non-trading hours. During regular trading hours, stock spot volume accounts for 52% and bStocks for 48%; during non-trading hours, bStocks volume rises to 58%, higher than stock spot's 42%. Meanwhile, bStocks is also beginning to extend into on-chain yield scenarios.

If bStocks' path proves viable, its significance to Binance goes beyond a single product. When a platform can offer cryptocurrency trading, US stock investments, tokenized asset holdings, stablecoin savings, and payment services within the same account, its nature transforms from an exchange into a super comprehensive gateway for financial services. BNB Chain's performance upgrades provide the technical foundation for settling tokenized assets, the stablecoin ecosystem provides the pricing and settlement currency, and the compliance system provides the qualifications to operate in various markets. The coordination among these three forms the infrastructure supporting this gateway.

In the traditional financial world, Morgan Stanley launched the first BTC ETF issued by a major US bank in April 2026, which holds actual Bitcoin and is the first spot Bitcoin ETF directly issued by a large commercial bank in US history. JPMorgan plans to allow institutional clients to use their BTC and ETH holdings as loan collateral. The boundary between traditional finance and crypto finance became increasingly blurred in 2026.

Binance's positioning at this intersection depends on how well it can meet the requirements of both sides: providing crypto users with a sufficiently rich range of traditional asset classes, and offering traditional financial users and institutions sufficiently mature infrastructure and compliance guarantees.

Conclusion

From user growth, compliance layout, stablecoin ecosystem to infrastructure construction, there is a logical chain behind Binance's investments in these four directions. Financial demand in emerging markets provides the user base, the compliance system opens market access, stablecoins become the core use case for these users, and infrastructure and bStocks determine how much capital and asset categories the platform can accommodate.

Nine years ago, the problem the industry needed to solve was how to get people to buy Bitcoin. The problem in 2026 has changed: crypto technology is evolving from an independent asset class into part of the global financial infrastructure.

How long this process will last and how far it will go is full of uncertainty. But at least for now, the most meaningful competition in the crypto industry has shifted from trading volume rankings to another dimension: whoever can first build the infrastructure connecting the crypto world and traditional finance will define the industry landscape for the next phase. Binance has given its answer to this question.