The BNB ecosystem has officially completed another quarterly burn of BNB tokens—this time incinerating tokens worth nearly $1 billion.

The disclosure came from the BNB Foundation, which confirmed the completion of the 31st burn in its ongoing quarterly series. Specifically, the team destroyed 1,579,207 BNB tokens worth approximately $916 million at the time of the transaction.

31st Quarterly Burn Summary

However, despite the large scale, this recent burn marks a decline from the previous quarter’s record. For context, in the 30th quarterly burn, the BNB Foundation eliminated 1.634 million BNB tokens, valued at approximately $1.16 billion.

The 30th burn comprised 1.524 million tokens destroyed through the Auto-Burn mechanism, along with around 110,000 BNB burned through the Pioneer Burn Program. However, in this latest burn event, the exercise destroyed no additional tokens under the Pioneer Burn Program.

Total BNB Burned So Far

This latest effort brings the total number of BNB tokens burned to approximately 40.89 million. At the current BNB price of $581, this equates to around $23.75 billion in value removed from the BNB ecosystem.

BNB now has a circulating supply of approximately 139.311 million tokens, valued at around $81 billion. With this valuation, the token ranks as the fifth-largest cryptocurrency and the largest exchange token by market capitalization.

For context, the BNB ecosystem aims to reduce the total supply from its original issuance of 200 million tokens to 100 million tokens. So far, the project is nearly halfway toward this goal, with the current supply hovering around 139 million tokens.

With over 40 million tokens worth billions of dollars destroyed, some community members have expressed concerns that such large sums could fund better initiatives like marketing.

This concern was recently directed to Binance founder Changpeng Zhao. He responded that the decision does not lie with him. Instead, the burn mechanism was a commitment in the BNB whitepaper. “A promise is a promise,” he stated.

Many have asked: Why don't you use that money for marketing instead?

Me: It's not up to me. It was in the whitepaper. A promise is a promise.🤷‍♂️

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) April 16, 2025

Overview of BNB

Notably, BNB is the native token of the BNB Chain ecosystem, powering transactions across BNB Smart Chain, opBNB, and BNB Greenfield. In addition to covering gas fees, it also serves as a governance token, a reserve asset, and a critical driver of ecosystem growth.

BNB employs two token burn mechanisms to manage supply:

• A quarterly Auto-Burn, which adjusts based on BNB price and network activity
• A real-time burn tied to gas fees, implemented through BEP95

All burned tokens go to a verifiable “black hole” address. Additionally, the Pioneer Burn Program assists users in recovering lost tokens through the burn process.