Binance's Token BNB Has Smashed a New ATH. This Is Crucial Amid Recent Price Surges in Ethereum and Solana

This is crucial amid recent price surges in Ethereum and Solana, driven by renewed interest in the DeFi and NFT ecosystems these platforms pioneered.

Binance’s native token BNB has smashed a new all-time high (ATH) on May 12, emerging as a key narrative within the recent price surges observed in Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL).

As covered, both ETH and SOL have seen renewed interest in the decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystems that these platforms have largely pioneered. While ETH maintains its dominance as the leading Layer-1 (L1) smart contract platform, Solana, on the other hand, has gained significant traction as an alternative L1 due to its high throughput and low transaction fees.

However, another narrative that has been intriguing market participants is the Binance token smashing past its ATH. Often regarded as an underdog to ETH in terms of decentralized application (dApp) integration and DeFi dominance, BNB’s price action might be indicating a shifting sentiment towards the token in the market.

As such, several market experts have doubled down on the token’s potential to play a pivotal role in the upcoming altcoin season, or “Altseason,” narrative. Despite being less popular than ETH or SOL in terms of user activity or dapp integration in the previous cycle, BNB’s ecosystem integrated some notable dapps and recorded high user activity.

Some of these Web3 applications include the decentralized exchange PancakeSwap, lending and borrowing protocol Venus, hardware cryptocurrency wallet Trust Wallet, decentralized options exchange Alpaca Finance, among others. Sustaining high transaction fee accrual to key dApps would further validate the BNB investment thesis.

Ultimately, while speculative, the confluence of ETH/SOL DeFi pumps combined with the BNB token’s breakout sets the stage for a potential alt season centered around the Binance ecosystem.

Bybit’s BNB Perpetual Contact drama

If the BNB token continues this momentum, experts feel that it could lead to a “BNB-Beta” run, where people might start investing in other projects on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Some notable projects include meme coins like FLOKI, exchange tokens such as CAKE, AI, ID, TWT, XVS, BEL, and WHY, among others. From an on-chain perspective, experts recommend monitoring the coin’s transaction volumes, decentralized exchange activity, lending/borrowing rates, and protocol revenue to gain further insights into whether this narrative is materializing.

Meanwhile, as the price of BNB on the coin perpetual contract began to drop by -5% in just a few minutes on May 11, on-chain sleuths attributed the drop to a wave of liquidations of long traders, especially those who used large leverage. “Such a sharp drop was not observed on any other exchange, as well as on the BNB/USDT spot pair on Bybit itself,” he wrote.