Binance Updates White Paper to Reword Section on Quarterly Manipulations with BNB

Binance has recently updated its white paper’s section devoted to quarterly manipulations with its native token binance coin (BNB), based on a version of the white paper backed up on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine on Feb. 8.

According to the section “Repurchasing plan” in the older version, Binance stated that they would buy back BNB each quarter using 20% of their profits, and then destroy them until the exchange buys 50% of all 100 million BNB back.

In the new version of the white paper, Binance has replaced “Repurchasing plan” with “The Burn” section, explaining that every quarter, the exchange will destroy BNB based on the trading volume on its crypto-to-crypto platform until it destroys 50% of all the BNB.

Both versions conclude that the exchange will eventually destroy 100 million BNB, leaving 100 million BNB remaining.

The older version of Binance’s white paper was captured on Wayback Machine on Feb. 8, while the newer version appeared in the archive on March 31.

Binance’s older white paper version vs. updated version. Source: Binance

Binance BNB’s description on its website has remained unchanged at press time since November 2018, stating that Binance “plans to use 20% of its profits each quarter buy back and burn BNB, until 50% of the total BNB supply (100 million BNB) is burned.”

As a Binance spokesperson told crypto news outlet The Block Crypto, Binance will still burn 20% of profits within the process described in the new version of the white paper.

Addressing the change, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao confirmed the news to The Block Crypto, claiming that the rewording was made to clarify that the exchange does not repurchase any BNB, but simply reduces the supply by burning the tokens. He said:

“We recently updated our whitepaper to better describe how we actually conduct the burn. For example, we removed the buy back reference because we actually don’t repurchase BNB and simply reduce the supply by burning BNB. We also removed the profit language because some regions tend to associate profits with securities, and we would like to distance BNB from that. So going forward, we plan to describe the burn this way, and burn what we burn.”

Yesterday, Binance launched its mainnet Binance Chain in beta testing mode for selected partners, also announcing that the exchange plans to execute the swap of its native token BNB on April 23. After that date, Binance will not support the withdrawal of ERC-20 BNB tokens, as the exchange plans to convert ERC-20 BNB tokens into native Binance Chain-based BNB (BEP2) coins.