BNB, the native token of Binance’s BNB Chain, has recently achieved a significant milestone, reaching an all-time high of $1,335 on October 7. Although it has since slightly retraced to around $1,306, BNB’s performance remains impressive, with a more than 6% increase in the last 24 hours. Over the past week, BNB has surged nearly 30%, contributing to a substantial monthly gain of roughly 50%. This remarkable rise has enabled BNB to surpass XRP in total market capitalization, with its current valuation standing at approximately $182.6 billion, eclipsing XRP’s $178 billion. Currently, BNB ranks as the third-largest cryptocurrency, trailing only Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The surge in BNB’s value reflects a broader trend of increasing utility and network activity within the BNB Chain ecosystem. Decentralized exchanges, such as Aster, have reported significant spikes in trading volumes, which in turn has driven demand for BNB as the primary gas and governance token of the chain. Additional data from DefiLlama indicates that BNB Chain’s total value locked (TVL) has risen by more than 7% in the past 24 hours, reaching approximately $4.5 billion. Network fees during this period amounted to $4.51 million, while protocol revenue reached $2.23 million.
The increase in BNB’s active addresses is noteworthy, with over 73 million recorded in September and an impressive 15 million already logged this month. Analysts from venture capital firm YZi Labs suggest that BNB’s fundamentals are well-positioned for mass adoption, highlighting key drivers of its post-ATH performance. These include increasing on-chain activity, broad staking utility, deflationary tokenomics supported by dual burn mechanisms, and low transaction costs following the recent Maxwell hard fork. Furthermore, institutional adoption appears to be on the rise, with several players integrating BNB for treasury and liquidity management purposes.
Coinciding with BNB’s rally is a resurgence of speculative trading activity on the blockchain. Bubblemaps, a blockchain analytics platform, has noted a significant increase in memecoin activity, characterizing this phase as the “BNB memecoin season.” This period has proven to be highly profitable, with over 100,000 on-chain traders participating in new token launches, and around 70% of these traders posting profits. Notable projects that have emerged during this season include the $4 memecoin, Binance Life, and PALU, with some early investors seeing profits ranging from $100,000 to $1 million.
This influx of retail speculation and capital flowing into the network has created an ideal environment for BNB’s upward momentum, reinforcing its dual role as both a utility token and a leading indicator of broader activity on Binance’s blockchain.
