What opportunities do retail investors have for BNB under the wave of institutional position building?

BNB has recently broken through the all-time high of $865. A number of U.S. listed companies have aggressively purchased it as a reserve asset, accompanied by positive factors such as ETF applications, promoting its transformation from an "exchange platform token" to an "institutional reserve asset". The institutionalization process has driven value revaluation, and retail investors can share growth opportunities through participating in the BNB Chain ecosystem, investing in concept stocks, engaging in exchange activities, and holding BNB deflationary dividends. The superposition of multiple narratives gives BNB long-term appreciation potential.

Author: Viee, core contributor of Biteye

Reposted by: White55, Huoxing Finance

Recently, BNB has experienced an eye-catching structural market trend. After reaching an all-time high (ATH) in July, it broke through the ATH again at $865.68 today. Along with many U.S. listed companies purchasing BNB as asset reserves on a large scale and positive news such as ETF applications, BNB, which was once regarded by the market as an "exchange platform token" and "public chain ecological token", is now evolving and expanding into an "institutional reserve asset".

Behind this market trend may not be a temporary hype, but a revaluation and positioning shift of BNB's value. This article will deeply analyze BNB's "institutionalization" path and various opportunities for retail investors to participate.

01. Review of BNB's "institutional evolution" path

In the past two months, three major events have occurred around BNB:

Multiple U.S. listed companies have included BNB in their asset reserves: Since July, several U.S. listed companies have successively announced plans to purchase or raise funds to allocate BNB. For example, CEA Industries, with the support of Yzi Labs, plans to raise $500 million (which can be expanded to $1.2 billion at most) to build the largest BNB reserve; Liminatus Pharma intends to invest up to $500 million in long-term investment in BNB; Windtree Therapeutics approved up to $700 million for the acquisition of BNB; Nano Labs plans to invest $1 billion to gradually hold 5% to 10% of the circulating BNB supply, and has currently purchased 128,000 BNB over-the-counter. These series of moves indicate that BNB is being regarded by some institutions as a reserve asset similar to Bitcoin.

ETF craze: In early May, the well-known asset management company VanEck formally submitted an application document for a BNB ETF to the U.S. SEC, including additional benefits such as staking. If approved, BNB is expected to become the focus of the next round of cryptocurrency ETF competition after Bitcoin and Ethereum.

BNB price breaks through all-time high: Driven by the resonance of the above positive factors, BNB continues to strengthen and climbed to a historical high of $865.68 on August 14. The following figure shows that since mid-July, the BNB position-weighted funding rate has continued to rise from negative to positive. From July 23 to August 14, it repeatedly rushed to about 0.015%–0.03% per 8 hours, rising synchronously with the price. During the pullback phase, it did not turn negative for a long time, indicating that long positions are dominant, and both spot and leverage have pushed up the price, with sufficient upward momentum and a relatively healthy structure.

Source: Coinglass

The above events reflect BNB's institutional transformation, expanding from relying mainly on the internal value support of the Binance ecosystem in the past to a new stage of being actively allocated by traditional institutions. When "Wall Street-style" buying surges in, BNB's value center has the momentum for a structural rise and a more long-term and stable source of demand. For retail investors, it is time to re-examine BNB's long-term potential and share in BNB's rising dividends through various channels.

02. Retail opportunity 1: On-chain gameplay of BNB Chain

For retail investors, actively participating in the BNB ecosystem on the chain is an important way to obtain value increments. They can participate in the dividends of BNB Chain through various methods such as DeFi, RWA, and Meme.

DeFi: The top DEX and lending protocols on BNB Chain have now ranked among the top in the industry in terms of TVL. For example, the leading decentralized exchange PancakeSwap (V3) has a TVL of about $2 billion, providing returns from liquidity pools of various currency pairs; the established lending protocol Venus supports lending of mainstream assets such as BNB; Lista DAO also has a TVL of $1 billion. Retail investors can choose appropriate DeFi strategies according to their risk preferences (as shown in the figure below).

RWA: BNB Chain is quickly becoming an emerging platform for RWA on-chain. Ondo Finance announced in July that it will introduce its tokenized products of more than 100 U.S. stocks and ETFs to BNB Chain, enabling global users to trade some U.S. stock assets 24/7. At the same time, the xStocks plan launched by Kraken and asset management company Backed will also be deployed on BNB Chain, supporting the trading of more than 60 U.S. stocks and ETFs. In terms of stablecoins, the Trump family company WLFI previously chose BNB Chain to launch the compliant stablecoin USD1, which has now been integrated into the BNB Chain DeFi system and opened a USD1 liquidity pool. Retail investors can more conveniently invest in U.S. stocks, U.S. bonds, etc., on BNB Chain to achieve diversified asset allocation.

Meme: At the beginning of the year, many phenomenal Meme tokens were born on BNB Chain, with unprecedented market popularity. If you are interested in speculating on Meme coins, you can scan the chain on Four.meme, the first Meme fair issuance platform on the BNB chain, and pay attention to newly deployed tokens. Of course, it should be remembered that the Meme market changes rapidly, and the current popularity has dropped significantly. It is better to invest when the popularity picks up. From the perspective of market opportunities, the popularity of Meme can bring considerable trading volume and new users to the BNB chain, which further increases the demand for BNB, which is indirectly beneficial to BNB holders.

Overall, the BNB Chain ecosystem is in a rising period with the influx of traffic and value. For retail investors, this means that on-chain opportunities are gradually emerging. They can not only steadily earn income in blue-chip DeFi projects but also try RWA gameplay or even explore dark horse Meme. As the core value carrier of BNB Chain, the prosperity of the chain will eventually be transformed into the value support of BNB. Therefore, by deeply participating in the BNB Chain ecosystem, you are actually growing together with BNB.

03. Retail opportunity 2: Coin-stock resonance, "BNB concept stock" ambush strategy

In simple terms, when a listed company announces a large-scale purchase of BNB or includes BNB in its financial strategy, the stock price of these companies begins to be highly correlated with BNB. When BNB soars, they often rise synchronously or proportionally, and vice versa. Therefore, if you are confident in BNB's fundamentals, you can consider ambushing relevant concept stocks before the market starts. For example, MicroStrategy continues to buy Bitcoin, and retail investors buying MicroStrategy's stock is equivalent to indirectly betting on Bitcoin's trend. Sometimes, MicroStrategy's stock price can even outperform Bitcoin's increase in the same period. Now, with the rise of BNB's institutional position-building wave, it is expected to replicate this kind of coin-stock resonance effect.

Several companies planning to include BNB in their asset reserves have been mentioned earlier (as shown in the above figure), and their stocks are highly correlated with BNB. So how should retail investors operate and control risks?

Grasp the information rhythm: Pay close attention to the announcement time of the above-mentioned companies regarding BNB. Often, the stock price has risen sharply at the moment the news is announced, and the risk of chasing higher after the event increases. For example, keep an eye on key nodes such as SEC documents, additional fundraisings, and completion of purchases. Layout at a low position before the news and choose to take profits in batches when the news is fulfilled.

Pay attention to BNB price linkage: These stocks have been highly correlated with BNB's price. For example, when BNB rose above $800 at the end of July, CEA, Windtree, etc. followed the rise intraday, and conversely, the stocks also fell to a certain extent. Therefore, BNB's market can be used as a leading indicator. If it is judged that BNB will start a new wave of rise, you can increase holdings of related stocks accordingly to wait for resonance. However, it should be noted that if BNB fluctuates sharply, the stocks may experience more violent roller-coaster market trends.

Pay attention to the relationship between concept stocks and Binance: Some stocks have more market confidence because of Binance's or CZ's participation. Therefore, you can pay attention to whether the official has further cooperative support for these companies, such as providing custody, strategic guidance, etc. These signals will enhance the market's trust in concept stocks holding BNB, thereby pushing up valuations.

It is worth noting that such opportunities have dual risks, being affected by both cryptocurrency market fluctuations and factors specific to the stock market itself (such as financing dilution). It is recommended that everyone try a small amount, strictly control positions, and track fundamentals in a timely manner.

04. Retail opportunity 3: Exchange gameplay

Binance has launched various activities in recent years, such as Launchpad, Launchpool, and Megadrop, and most of the participation methods are related to BNB. In fact, using exchange gameplay is equivalent to turning BNB from a simple investment product into a tool for obtaining multiple returns. You can not only enjoy the appreciation of BNB itself but also get additional income.

The following table summarizes several current mainstream new token mining activities on Binance to help you choose appropriate ways to make money according to your own situation.

You can choose appropriate strategies according to your own capital size and time investment:

Stable holding type: If you have sufficient funds and are unwilling to spend too much energy, you can adopt the "BNB holder" strategy. That is, hold a certain amount of BNB for a long time and actively participate in Launchpool and irregular HODLer airdrop activities. This strategy focuses on generating coins from coins, and the income comes from the superposition of BNB appreciation and new coin airdrops.

Active participation type: If you have little money but have plenty of time and strong hands-on ability, you can try the "Alpha Points holder" route, aiming to meet the point thresholds for airdrops/TGE, Pre-TGE, and Booster. Exit in time after completing the tasks to lock in profits. It should be emphasized that this strategy must calculate costs to avoid losing money due to excessive transaction fees and slippage expenses.

In addition to the above main activities, Binance also provides BNB holders with a series of benefits such as VIP levels, fee discounts, voting for listing, and Binance Pay cashback. For example, in Binance spot and futures transactions, using BNB to deduct fees can enjoy discounts. In addition, BNB holders can also participate in some exclusive wealth management products of Binance Earn to achieve multiple benefits.

05. Retail opportunity 4: Holding BNB, deflationary dividends and token economic model

No matter which gameplay you participate in, most paths ultimately involve holding BNB. A core reason why holding BNB is optimistic by many people is BNB's deflationary token economic model, which is also the only deflationary token among the top market capitalization tokens. As of July 2025, a total of about 60 million BNB have been burned (accounting for about 31% of the initial supply), and the circulation has dropped from 200 million to about 139 million. It is expected that BNB will reach the target of a constant supply of 100 million in the next few years.

Source: bnbburn.info, Binance Research

Automatic burning mechanism: BNB's earliest burning method was based on the BNB trading volume of the Binance trading platform. From the fourth quarter of 2021, a new automatic burning algorithm was introduced, which dynamically adjusts according to the BNB price and the number of blocks generated by the BNB Chain. For example, in the just-completed 32nd BNB quarterly burn, a total of 1,595,599.78 BNB were burned, valued at approximately $1.024 billion based on the price at the time of execution.

The following figure shows the formula of the automatic burning mechanism, where B represents the number of BNB to be burned in this quarter, N represents the total number of blocks produced by BNB Chain in this quarter (the number is determined by the fixed block time), P represents the average price of BNB, and K is a constant (currently set to 250 after the hard fork upgrade). It can be seen from the formula that when the price is higher, the burning amount is less, and vice versa. The essence of this mechanism is to increase the deflation intensity when the market is sluggish, maintaining BNB's value anchor by reducing circulation; while automatically reducing the burning intensity when the market is hot to avoid excessive supply contraction.

Real-time burning mechanism: In addition to quarterly concentrated burning, BNB Chain introduced the BEP-95 protocol in 2021 to realize on-chain real-time burning. A fixed proportion of the Gas fee paid for each BNB Chain transaction will be directly burned. The more prosperous BNB is, the more BNB will be burned. In the long run, the growth of on-chain activity will also promote the increase in trading volume, thereby triggering more real-time burning.

For retail investors, BNB's deflation means increased scarcity. Assuming stable or growing demand, reduced supply will push up the intrinsic value of each token. This is similar to a listed company continuously repurchasing stocks to increase earnings per share and net assets, thereby benefiting the stock price. It is worth noting that BNB is committed to around 100 million coins and will not be reduced indefinitely to avoid affecting network operation security. Therefore, when approaching 100 million coins, it is necessary to pay attention to whether the policy will be adjusted, such as switching to maintaining a constant inflation rate. But at least in the next few years, the deflationary trend is clear.

06. BNB value revaluation and future outlook

With the entry of institutions, traditional financial institutions are also changing their revaluation of BNB. For example, Standard Chartered Bank pointed out in its report in May this year that it expects BNB's price to double by the end of 2025, reaching about $1,275, and is expected to further rise to around $2,775 by the end of 2028.

Source: Standard Chartered Bank (for reference only)

In addition, the development of BNB in the payment field will also provide additional support for its value, further promoting the market's upward adjustment of its valuation model. Binance's payment application Binance Pay has been promoted globally, with BNB as one of the important settlement currencies. Data shows that Binance Pay has processed 300 million transactions with a total transaction volume of $230 billion, a large part of which uses BNB for transactions. For example, in the French Riviera, Binance has cooperated with fintech Lyzi to allow more than 80 local merchants to support cryptocurrency payments, including BNB and other currencies. If this trend continues, the demand for BNB will come not only from investment and trading but also from real commercial circulation.

In general, as of mid-2025, BNB is in the upward channel of value revaluation. Institutional position building has given it the narrative of "digital gold reserve", ecological prosperity has given it the narrative of "public chain leader", and payment expansion has given it the narrative of "practical currency". The superposition of multiple narratives gives BNB the imagination space to further increase its market value. At the same time, we should remain rational. BNB's long-term value ultimately depends on whether the ecosystem can continue to build and maintain innovation and stable operation in the ever-changing market.

07. Conclusion

From the initial platform token, popular public chain token to now a cryptocurrency asset allocated by traditional institutional investors, BNB's transformation also reflects the maturity of the cryptocurrency industry. Under the wave of institutional position building, as a retail investor, you can share in BNB's value growth through various ways such as in-depth on-chain participation, layout of related concept stocks, participation in exchange activities, and holding BNB. As the slogan goes "Build and Build", BNB's value will be jointly participated in and shaped by everyone. Looking forward to the future, with the joint promotion of institutions and retail investors, can BNB start a new golden age of innovation? Let's wait and see.

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