As for a Forbes report highlighted earlier, Zhao and Binance alone own approximately 71% of the around 146 million BNB tokens circulating currently.
Changpeng Zhao, Binance founder was released early from custody on Sept. 27 In this period the Bitcoin BTC ticked down $65,549.19 and Binance’s BNB ticked down $600.40 token since the start of the trading day.
In the prior Forbes report, Zhao owns 64% of the overall BNB stock; the Binance CEO’s stake is approximately $61 billion in June 2024 which enables him to become the 24th richest man. After the publication of the report, concern arose that with massive investments made by Zhao in Binance’s native currency, the token would be centralized again.
Currently, Zhao has 94 million BNB in his pocket and, at the time of writing, that is equal to $57 billion, which is considerably less than it was in June 2024 when its price was above $700.
According to a study made by Gray Wolf Analytics in Forbes in 2024, the initial distribution of the BNB tokens was 80 million out of it allotted to the original team of Binance. Also, the company still has about 46 million of those tokens as we speak.
Department of Justice charges and settlement impact BNB price
In February 2023 the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Binance, and its founder Zhao with violating the Bank Secrecy Act.
In a joint filing from the US Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control, the US Department of the Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the government regulators stated:
“Although it is a private company, Binance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and any news regarding Zhao and Binance’s criminal and civil exposure is expected to impact the trading of many cryptocurrencies.”
As far as the GAS token is concerned, this statement was proven right, and within 24 hours of following the news of a $4 billion settlement between Binance and the Securities and Exchange Commission, BNB surged to approximately 7% on Nov. 21.
The global settlement with the SEC came as a financial loss of 4.3 billion dollars for Binance, besides, Zhao was imposed with another $50 million penalty as part of the agreement. Also, the DOJ seized Binance’s future freedom of managing its business independently over the three subsequent years, and that duty was given to the Forensic Risk Alliance.