In 2017, crypto didn’t just tiptoe into mainstream headlines: it crashed in with the force of a tidal wave. Bitcoin soared past $19,000 for the first time, and overnight, thousands of ICO projects promised to “change the world,” often backed by little more than vague white papers and hype videos. Global regulators scrambled to keep pace as investors flocked into sales of tokens that sometimes vanished as quickly as they appeared.
Against this feverish backdrop, Binance emerged like a rocket ship on a moon mission. In just 165 days, the exchange vaulted to the top global ranking by trading volume, a feat few could have imagined.
Part of this meteoric rise was fuelled by Binance’s own bold bet: its initial coin offering (ICO) of BNB tokens in July 2017. The team raised $15 million in under two weeks, an impressive achievement at the time. Instead of pouring the funds into lavish offices or early cash-outs, the founding team funnelled resources into engineering firepower and user-focused services.
2018–2019: The Crypto Winter and Trial by Fire
After the explosive highs of 2017, bitcoin slid from nearly $20,000 to just above $3,000. Media headlines screamed “death spiral,” and thousands of small projects vanished overnight. Yet, inside Binance, something different took root. While coins collapsed, everybody put their heads down and kept building. In this fog of volatility, a defining trial arrived: the 2019 security breach.
Hackers masquerading as ordinary users slipped into the system through customer service chats, uploading seemingly innocuous files that carried hidden payloads. Inside those files lurked malware designed to log keystrokes, manipulate environments, and probe for weaknesses.
When the hack finally detonated, more than 7,000 BTC vanished — a blow that could have shattered user trust forever.
2020-2021: The DeFi Explosion and Global Relocation as the Ultimate Growth Hack
While the world grappled with Covid-19 lockdowns and isolation, DeFi protocols burst onto the scene, driving volumes and pushing BTC above $60,000. For Binance, it was also the moment to embrace remote fully.
From its earliest days, Binance was a global experiment, a patchwork of remote hires scattered across time zones. However, it wasn’t until after the full mass relocation was completed in 2021 that Binance became truly borderless.
Each relocation became a culturally defining point, turning the organization into a truly distributed entity: more resilient, more adaptive, and more connected to the pulse of its users around the world.
2022–2023: Terra’s Meltdown and Compliance Renaissance
The next cycle didn’t just test the industry; it almost broke it. In 2022, Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin spiralled into a death loop, vaporizing tens of billions of dollars in investor wealth, along with user trust, in days. Many popular crypto projects, funds, and exchanges were found to have misappropriated users’ funds, leading to a crisis of confidence. The climax was FTX’s spectacular implosion that torched what little faith remained in centralized platforms.
Binance emerged as one of the major cryptocurrency platforms that did not collapse or experience any bank run through this period, a testament to the soundness of its systems, investment and trading strategies, and credible treasury reserves. In the aftermath of this chaos, Binance came forward to introduce Proof of Reserves or PoR.
Binance’s POR is a mechanism that allows users to verify that the exchange holds enough assets to cover all customer deposits at a 1:1 ratio or more. In other words, for every 1 bitcoin that users deposit on the platform, Binance holds 1 bitcoin or more in reserves. By using Binance’s POR, anyone can verify that the amount of funds visible in Binance’s wallets corresponds to the sum of all user fund holdings, as well as check the safekeeping of their assets. Binance’s implementation of PoR has set a benchmark in the industry and encouraged other exchanges to adopt similar practices.
However, this moment also called for an even greater scrutiny over the cryptocurrency industry and called for a cultural pivot, from the industry’s early “build first, ask forgiveness later” approach to a lived mantra of compliance, trust, and fortification.
Binance’s pivot here saw CZ stepping back, and Richard Teng stepping up as the new CEO, signalling to the world that compliance and transparency would become Binance’s guiding principles. Inside, the mood was a tense mix of urgency and grim determination.
2024–2025: Spot ETFs, Halving Tailwinds, and the AI Wave
By 2024, the crypto world was roaring back to life. The SEC’s long-awaited approval of spot BTC ETFs in January signalled a new era: institutional investors poured in, family offices scrambled to set up new crypto funds, and financial news tickers began treating bitcoin less like a punchline and more like a respectable asset class.
April’s Bitcoin halving event further tightened supply, while a new wave of AI-driven blockchain projects started reshaping entire corners of the industry, from automated compliance tools to predictive trading bots.
Within this boom, Binance found itself reborn, not as the swashbuckling rebel of 2017, but as a hardened, battle-tested machine, tempered by crises and with strong leadership. With Richard Teng as CEO and Co-Founder Yi He as a steady cultural compass, the company doubled down on trust and operational excellence while refusing to let go of its “hardcore” edge.
In parallel, the engineering teams continue writing new chapters. Shining, an OG Backend Engineer in the Futures tech team, found himself at the centre of what he called “UTA product sprint.” Just a couple of months ago, team members across regions worked around the clock to develop Futures’ unified account feature.
About Binance
Binance is a leading global blockchain ecosystem behind the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume and registered users. Binance is trusted by more than 250 million people in 100+ countries, for its industry-leading security, transparency, trading engine speed, protections for investors, and unmatched portfolio of digital asset products and offerings from trading and finance to education, research, social good, payments, institutional services, and Web3 features. Binance is devoted to building an inclusive crypto ecosystem to increase the freedom of money and financial access for people around the world with crypto as the fundamental means.
For more information, visit: https://www.binance.com
