By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 26th, 2024
The airdrop activity on the BNB Chain and the daily active users crossing 1.2 million proved as a catalyst for the BNB price rally to $400.
BNB Coin, the native cryptocurrency of the BNB Chain, formerly known as the Binance Smart Chain, showed strong upward price action on Thursday, February 22. The BNB price has surged all the way past $381 and is eyeing its next immediate price target of $400.
This is the highest level for the BNB Coin since the FTX crash, setting aside concerns from last year regarding legal issues surrounding the crypto exchange. This boost was fueled by an upcoming airdrop that engaged BNB users.
As we know, the crypto exchange faced solid regulatory backlash and an SEC lawsuit last year. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao is facing a sentencing, scheduled for hearing this April. While the overall cryptocurrency market experienced a recovery last year, BNB faced challenges as its price faltered, dropping to a two-year low in October.
This decline coincided with mounting regulatory concerns surrounding Binance, wherein the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing contested that BNB was a security.
BNB’s performance is intricately linked to the activities on the Binance exchange. Any decline in user engagement or trading volume on the platform could have a ripple effect across the entire BNB network. However, Binance reached a settlement with US authorities by paying a hefty fine of $4.3 billion and CZ stepping down. As a result, the selling pressure on the BNB coin eased up considerably.
Token Airdrops and New Binance Milestones
Interestingly, the latest craze for airdrops has further extended into the BNB ecosystem, with Binance rolling out the cross-chain gaming platform Portal to its Launchpool. This move allows Binance users to participate in the upcoming PORTAL token airdrop scheduled for February 29, along with listing the token on the exchange.
Users can lock up their BNB tokens or FDUSD stablecoins in Portal’s liquidity pools to become eligible for the airdrop. In response to the announcement, BNB holders swiftly transferred over $400 million worth of BNB tokens to Portal within 24 hours, as observed by blockchain intelligence firm Arkham.
BNB holders have sent >$400M in BNB to Binance in the past 24 hours to farm @Portalcoin’s launchpool.
7 separate addresses have sent over $10M of BNB, with the largest whale sending in over $40M.https://t.co/EBINQnUPWn pic.twitter.com/dZvvxYXJ0E
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) February 22, 2024
Furthermore, the strong regulator action by the US SEC against Binance hasn’t deterred the blockchain’s users. The BNB Chain blog released a report titled “BNB Chain & the Web3 Blueprint”, revealing that the blockchain network has now exceeded 1.2 million active users. Over the past four years, the total count of active users on the BNB chain has surged sixfold.
In 2023, BNB Chain demonstrated remarkable progress, especially amidst increased activity and a favorable turn in the market cycle. Binance Smart Chain, the smart contracts execution layer, along with opBNB, BNB Chain’s Layer-2 solution, exhibited their scalability by handling peak throughputs of 2,000 and 4,500 transactions per second, respectively.