The 2024 bull market led to a historical year for Binance. Centralized exchanges proved key for market growth, getting a boost from professional and institutional traders.
Binance crossed the milestone of 250M registered users during the 2024 bull market, based on data from its annual report. Centralized exchanges proved key for liquidity and producing fast price reactions, despite the growth of competing DEXs. On average, daily volumes on Binance grew by 27%, while margin trading volumes were up by 390% for all of 2024.
Binance carried more than $160B in user assets under custody, while breaking above $100 trillion in all-time trades. At the end of the year, Binance actively traded 388 listed assets, with 412 coins and tokens available on Binance Earn.
Users flocked to Binance at the first sign of an accelerating bull market. The last 50 million users were added in the second half of the year. The exchange attracted new registrations both as a source of Bitcoin (BTC) for long-term investors, and as a hub for the newest meme and AI agent tokens. The exchange pivoted quickly to offer access to some of the hottest markets, bringing a mix of spot and futures pairs.
For new traders, Binance offered a mix of easy access and educational products. Volumes expanded for spot, futures and leveraged trading, with additional user engagement from products like Spot Copy Trading. Additional incentives were given with the BFUSD reward-bearing asset for margin trading.
Institutional users accelerated adoption in 2024
Institutional growth marked the tidal shift in 2024, with Binance becoming one of the key hubs for professional investors. Binance’s VIP users increased by 116%, while institutional user registrations expanded by 97%.
Binance has pointed out institutions may be the main drive behind the next wave of adoption. Large-scale investors have grown with access to Binance Wealth and curated banking partnerships, mixing traditional finance and Web3.
After years of clashing with local regulators, Binance doubled down on its efforts in 2024. The Binance compliance team expanded to 650 experts, securing regulatory clearance in 21 jurisdictions. Binance is also a mandatory reporter, responding to over 65,000 requests.
The exchange also trained over 1,300 investigators from 80 countries. It also keeps close track of potential exploits, and has survived most of 2024 without major incidents. Over the past year, the exchange’s security team claims to have prevented losses of up to $4.2B for 2.8M users. The exchange has also locked and returned $88M to victims of fraud and scams, where the funds were still reachable.
Binance brand moved into fintech and payment products
While trading was the main source of traffic and income, Binance also kept expanding its influence as a payment gateway. Binance Pay grew its user base by 226% for the past period. Fiat to crypto onboarding spread to 20 new countries, adding millions of potential users.
The service offers more than 1,000 widely available payment methods in 125 fiat currencies. As a result, Binance’s P2P market grew by 28% in terms of trades between users. Binance’s P2P service replaced previous OTC peer networks, which virtually disappeared from the world of crypto. User retention was also high for Binance, with 60% of P2P users returning for subsequent transactions.
Binance Earn increased its value locked by 144%, by offering passive earnings and fixed-rate loans. On-chain yields was a one-stop service to access DeFi protocols, allowing users to participate through their Binance accounts. Binance watches the Web3 landscape closely, picking the best-performing assets, with some risk warnings. The on-chain yields service arrived as late as December, and may be one of the drivers of growth in the new year. Binance has also deposited BTC into Babylon Labs, allowing users to make use of the yield through their Binance account.
Binance’s brand still carries decentralized products, but the past year shifted attention to in-house production. The exchange took charge of building up its community through Binance Square, while also taking an active role in curating new assets with daily offers from Binance Alpha.
Over the past year, Binance set out to change the world of crypto by offering a one-stop access to airdrops, pre-market trading, and other products to simplify the constant growth of new tokens and yield opportunities.
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