Binance Enters A No Listing Fees Regime, Announces Charity Donation Plans

World’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has announced that it has changed its listing fee policy and now favors compulsory donations to its new launched charity initiatives by token teams in exchange for a listing on their platform.

Binance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, by adjusted trading volume. Over $900m has passed through its servers in the past 24 hours. The next largest competitor, fellow Hong Kong-based exchange OKEx, had a trading volume at just over $500m.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (better known as CZ) said he had this rough idea in his head for about a month, but didn’t think about it too seriously or formally, mostly because there are always other distractions. He said

“after meeting with the President of Malta, where there is discussion surrounding charity initiatives, I began to think about it a bit more formally. I gave the idea into our leadership team 3 days ago (on the weekend, as usual), and got unanimous support.”

Binance attracted criticism over the summer when crypto media outlets suggested that the exchange charged projects sometimes millions to be listed on its servers.

It had been accused of chargig an upwards of 400 BTC (equivalent to $2.6m at the contemporary market rate) for token listing; a claim Binance has strenuously denied.

CZ said the new listing policy would in part help to provide clarity to the exchange’s users and the wider cryptocurrency community. He added

“there was so much incorrect data, rumor and FUD [fear, uncertainty, doubt] about listing fees,” he said. “We care about our community and want to address [that] once and for all.”

CZ said that there were currently no plans for the exchange to donate a percentage of its trading fees to charity. He did consider that there might be a partial drop in trading fees, but had not ruled out anything for the future.

Although there were plans long-term, quick decision-making was also needed.

“As you can see, we don’t plan too far ahead,” he said. “We do have long-term visions, just no detailed plans. Things change too quickly”.