TIL almost no one knows Binance changed their whitepaper last summer and no longer burns BNB based on profit. All analysis floating around (by Arca and Messari) is not accurate and yet CZ is happily retweeting and engaging with it. They now burn BNB based on traded volume
This change happened sometimes in Q2 last year. 
CZ told me back then: “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."
This was one to distance BNB from being a security. Before the change, WP said “we will use 20% of our profits to buy back BNB” and now it says “we will destroy BNB based on the trading volume.” They can burn whatever they want
For the BNB trolls that are saying "this is only for regulatory arbitrage, Binance is still burning 20% of their profits" and taking Binance's 2-year old promise at face value... when even execs say they don't burn based on profit anymore... All I will say is good luck to you
The USD amount of the Q4 burn was the second-highest ever recorded after Q4 2017. Binance's Q4 burn is interesting because the increase doesn't correspond to the decrease in traded volume.
In Q2, for example, Binance burned $23.84 million while recording traded volume $151.70 billion. In Q4, Binance's volume decreased by 47% while the burn increased by more than 60%. This is nicely demonstrated in the ratio between the burn and traded volume.
It makes virtually no sense to compare spot volume and futures volume... Futures offer highly leveraged trading, which is manifested in the volume. On top of that, fees are about 3-4x lower on Binance Futures than on spot.
So to say that the reason that the ratio is increasing is because they are generating more money from Futures also doesn't make much sense. Spot trading likely still makes 80%+ of Binance's revenues. There is simply no way that Binance generated more profit in Q4 than in Q2
My theory is that Binance is just burning more BNB because they already have it in treasury anyway (why not?) and if they burn more, it gives them more headlines and the appearance that Q4 was really successful. Which, if you look at all the data, just can't be possible
All exchanges struggled in Q4, Binance is not the exception. No matter how much of BNB they are burning. Binance is still a massively successful business but it's simply not as successful as they would lead you to believe. Do your own research
What does this even mean? What a word salad response. Good job @Timccopeland
