So this is Binance, BNB, versus Internet Computer Protocol, ICP. If you've seen my videos before, you know I'm all in on ICP. But you all asked me live to talk about Binance and the BNB token, so here it is. I did actually hold BNB last year, and I researched Binance's BNB token and Internet Computer Protocol much, much further than most people do. I'm going to give you the executive summary of that research here.
Why I held both BNB and ICP before judging either
One of the most powerful ways you can do your own research is to hold both tokens in small amounts before you've done the big research, because that gets rid of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is where you think something is good just because you're holding it. So last year I held both of these, I did deep research on them, and that is what I'm presenting to you now.
First, the BNB token is basically the token for the Binance Smart Chain, which comes from the Binance Exchange. Technically, in terms of the technology, this is pretty much a copy of Ethereum in terms of what it does. In utterly simple terms, it's like a copy of the Ethereum blockchain where the gas fees are a bit smaller. This pumped a lot based on the Binance Exchange pushing it.
BNB looks like centralization at its worst
But still, according to my recent research, CZ has over half of the tokens for this single-handedly. To me, that's outrageous. And almost none of the value of holding the BNB token is actually on the protocol itself. You've got all these tokens that launched recently, or over the last few years, on Binance. But the Binance Smart Chain is no longer the best place to launch a junk coin. And I say junk coin because I mean things that have no real long-term potential, that have no fundamentals.
Right now, if you look at the market caps, BNB is sitting at around $88 billion, which I think is drastically overvalued. Someone in my chat, Kelly, said Binance is a one-man show with legal troubles, and that's exactly how it looks to me. Binance has been fined huge amounts for committing crimes. I've used the Binance Exchange myself, and it feels far inferior to using Coinbase, at least here in the US. Coinbase is a much better experience with much better prices in my opinion. And what I've seen about Binance doesn't look good to me. It looks like there's a lot of criminal activity going on over there, and all kinds of exploitive stuff. Yet this token is valued hugely. One single person has something like $50-something billion of it, which to me is centralization at its worst. If you want to understand how an exchange like this actually generates its money in the first place, I broke that down in how crypto exchanges like Binance and Coinbase make money.
The new junk coins went to Solana, not Binance
A lot of the coins recently, from people just looking to get to the most users as fast as possible, have been going to Solana. So to me, the better Solana does, the worse that is for BNB. And Solana, logically and technologically — again, these are utterly simplified terms — is basically an Ethereum copy too, just like Binance. So to me, both Solana and BNB are drastically overvalued. They're hyped, and their tech is basically a copy.
People talk about users all the time. Binance does have lots of users with the Binance Exchange, and there have been all kinds of junk coins that launched on the Binance Smart Chain. But what is the future for those tokens? They're going to go to zero, because there's always a new coin launching, there's always something new to invest in. This is the same pattern I keep coming back to across my coin reviews in my Money playlist.
Internet Computer Protocol is the truth in crypto
But then there's Internet Computer Protocol. To me, Internet Computer Protocol is the truth in crypto, where most of the rest is a crypto matrix ripping you off. Right now it would be a 20x or so just for Internet Computer Protocol's market cap to get to where BNB is today. So to me, BNB has a long way it can go down, whereas ICP has so far up it can go by comparison. I went deeper on exactly that point in why crypto market caps are a distraction and only ICP is real.
If you look at the tech, imagine I didn't tell you which was which, and I described one of these like this: it's the first real third-generation blockchain. It does AI — you can do AI fully on chain. It does websites, applications, decentralized exchanges, and Web3 social media networks like OpenChat and Tagger, both of which I'm holding as my second and third largest investments behind Internet Computer Protocol. If I told you all of that without telling you which was which, you'd probably think that the one valued at $88 billion would be the one that technologically is going to overthrow Ethereum. But it's not. That's what's so crazy.
Internet Computer Protocol is the only real third-generation blockchain where the technology is vastly advanced beyond any other. And the reason is that they have the largest research and development team in blockchain. They've put over 1,000 person-years of research into building Internet Computer Protocol and into solving the hardest problems in crypto, like: how do you put a website like JerryBanfield.com fully on chain?
I host my own website fully on chain
It turns out you can do just that — website hosting — and I've used this firsthand. I'm not listening to somebody else's opinion here. My own website is hosted on here. There have been 30,000-plus visits to my website, and it's cost me almost nothing. My website is secure, requiring no WordPress plugins or security plugins. It has an Internet Identity sign-in, which is easy for me to use, and it's the same Internet Identity I sign in to everything else with, including OpenChat, Tagger, and the Network Nervous System Wallet. And it's almost infinitely scalable. All I have to do is pay for computation, and it hardly takes any computation to serve my website because I made it in a Linktree format. So I've used this firsthand — the tech is vastly superior. This is the kind of thing I keep documenting in my ICP Crypto playlist, and it's a big part of why I bring people into the Jerry Banfield Family on the Internet Computer to see it for themselves.
What technology does BNB actually have?
So what technology does BNB have? BNB has an exchange, but holding the BNB token does not give you any real ownership over the exchange. Do you understand that? When you're holding the BNB token, you have no ownership over the Binance Exchange. So that which gives value to BNB is not on chain. They do buy some BNB and burn it, but when you consider this is a coin that's made the CEO of Binance rich and done very little else — sure, some of the holders have gotten trading fee discounts — but if you look at how this has performed, it has underperformed Bitcoin and Ethereum over the last two years. In the shorter term, sure, it's kept pace and even gotten a little ahead. But over the last two years it's underperformed Bitcoin and it's underperformed Ethereum. Two years ago, with the bull market ending and the bear market getting going, this also dumped, and it dumps very easily. Whenever something goes on with Binance or CZ, this takes a massive dump.
So compare that to the best technology in crypto, the largest research and development team in crypto, the number one AI crypto out there, a Bitcoin and an Ethereum layer two, a real world computer. To me, this is an easy comparison.
But what about Solana solving Ethereum's speed and gas?
Someone in my chat, Benny, asked: well, what about Solana solving Ethereum's speed and gas? That's some of the same things people have said about BNB. But these chains technologically are very, very similar to Ethereum. The problem is you can't put hardly any data on chain. You can put a gigabyte of data fully on chain on ICP. That would be impractical, if not impossible, on BNB, and the same thing with Solana.
So the only reason BNB and Solana have such high value is because people are very new to crypto and they don't understand how to research the actual technology, and how to separate hype, marketing, and speculation from what real utility the protocol itself has. What can you actually build on it? If you watch the Solana hype videos, they're just talking about users. And the only reason there are users is because you had things like FTX, which used huge amounts of money and then funneled it in to pay people to build on Solana. But they're not even really building on Solana. Solana is not a real world computer. You can't put a website on Solana. Your NFT on Solana is going to be off-chain. Same thing with BNB. At this point, the better Solana does, the worse it is for BNB. I went even further on this in my breakdown destroying Solana in a debate versus ChatGPT.
The ICP launchpad versus the Binance Smart Chain
But Internet Computer is coming for all of them. Once you see what Internet Computer can do, it changes everything. One reason BNB pumped so much is because of people launching tokens on it. But once people see the ICP launchpad, it's so far superior to anything you can do on the Binance Smart Chain. You can easily make your own coin — a meme coin, a serious coin, and everything in between. These coins have raised huge amounts of money. OpenChat raised what today is about $10 million worth of ICP on their launch, and then it's held directly in the treasury.
This ecosystem on ICP is vastly advanced beyond anything that's happening on BNB. And the coins are not nearly as centralized as what's going on on BNB, because Dominic Williams is not sitting there holding 50% of the coins on ICP. So in that respect, ICP, just in terms of tokenomics, is drastically more decentralized than BNB.
Holders, decentralization, and why BNB is not a stock
If you look at Binance, you can check through the Explorer, but it's not even very easy to actually see how many holders there are. If you go to the official Explorer, it doesn't even make it easy to look at the first one. But on ICP, it says there are about 2.3 million holders. I know that's roughly the same number of people who've created Internet Identities on ICP. And consider that it would be a 20x to get to the same market cap on ICP as on BNB. Meanwhile, the BNB number most likely doesn't even include hardly anybody actually holding their BNB on Binance itself.
So this is so centralized that, to me, it totally removes the value of why we invest in crypto to begin with. People are investing in BNB like it's a stock, but it's not a stock. You don't own Binance if you're holding this. You're just funneling money into a coin that does not give you real ownership, and that is from a company proven in the past to be paying huge fines because of the crimes the Binance Exchange has done.
So Internet Computer is like every reason I invested in crypto to start with, and the BNB token is like the opposite of why I would invest in crypto. That's why I'm all in on Internet Computer Protocol. This is everything to me — the reason I got into crypto investing. You can stake your Internet Computer Protocol with as little as $1. You're not dependent on any one centralized exchange. Internet Computer Protocol could theoretically continue to run even without DFINITY. Now, things could get wild, and this is also much newer than BNB and Binance in terms of how long the protocol has been released. But this is the kind of conversation I love to have one-on-one with people in the Jerry Banfield Family.
Where is the future going?
You've got to think: where is the future going? Is the future going towards Binance? I think BNB has topped out. The Binance Smart Chain is no longer the premier place to launch your new coin, and it's trying to do the same thing ICP already does better. It's trending towards Internet Computer Protocol. To me, over the next year, Internet Computer Protocol will shred any of the gains that BNB gets. BNB has a big market cap, but it's high risk in my view — this could easily go to zero. Whereas Internet Computer Protocol, by comparison, only has about 5% of the market cap of BNB. It seems relatively low risk to me because of all the research I've done and presented in my other videos, and it looks to me like we could easily 100x on ICP.
So would I buy BNB?
So you all asked what I think about BNB. If I use BNB and compare it to ICP, Binance would probably be one of the last cryptos I would buy. I would rather have Solana than Binance, because at least Solana is the destination for new meme coins at the moment. Last year I actually had equal amounts of Solana and Internet Computer, and I sold all my Solana for Internet Computer after doing my research thoroughly on both of them. That's my own experience and my own opinion, not advice for what you should do — but for me, the comparison between Internet Computer and BNB is a crazy one, and it's an easy call.