Pleasant Surprise: Binance Unknowingly Staked XLM & Made $775k
Permanent loss of funds has been an unfortunate reality for some in the early cryptoeconomy. Fortunately for Binance they’ve just experienced the opposite, having accidentally staked their way into a sum of nearly 10 million lumens (XLM), the native asset of the Stellar network.
On July 18th, the Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange giant revealed they “heeded the Stellar team’s recommendations to change some parameters on both cold and hot wallets” back in the fall of 2018.
That’s when the exchange began unknowingly staking some of their XLM holdings, the company explained on Thursday:
“Fast forward to this week, when we looked into the staking of Stellar for Binance.com, we discovered that we had already earned 9,500,000 XLM ($775,000 USD) worth of extra XLM tokens. All weekly staking rewards between then and now are documented on the blockchain […] and credited to Binance.”
Turning a Plus Into a Bigger Plus
Having made a small war chest of lumens appear seemingly out of “thin air” as President Trump would say, Binance is turning that XLM trove into an even bigger positive by setting it aside for community rewards.
Specifically, the exchange plans to begin XLM staking support on July 20th and thereafter conduct snapshots of its users’ XLM addresses for the ensuing 40-day period. Once that window closes, the users will receive their proportional staking rewards alongside a one-time bonus XLM payment from Binance’s novel trove.
Notably, non-stakers who simply hold their XLM on Binance after July 20th will also receive portions of the bonus XLM payout.
“This recent support for XLM staking is the latest in a long line of moves we have done to always provide the best for Binance users,” the exchange declared.
The lumens price enjoyed an acute boon as the quirky news made the rounds, with a single XLM token trading at $0.088 at press time for an intraday rise of around seven percent.
One of the harder hit tokens of the 2018 cryptoeconomy bear market, XLM is still trading 90 percent below its all-time price high of $0.93 — a mark the token hit back in January 2018.
Onward and Upward for Binance: First Stablecoin Nears
The addition of XLM staking support comes as Binance is on the verge of releasing its first in-house stablecoin.
This week, smart contract security startup Quantstamp revealed they had completed auditing Binance’s inaugural stablecoin, the pound-pegged Binance GBP (BGBP), with satisfactory results.
As part of the audit, the security experts identified a handful of “low risk issues” in the token’s code that the powerhouse exchange has since cleaned up. With the security review finished, the project is all but ready to be released.
On the news, Binance chief executive officer Changpeng “CZ” Zhao noted the BGBP would be released on two blockchains:
“As a dual issue token, BGBP is created on both Ethereum as an ERC20 token and on Binance Chain as a BEP2 token. We will eventually enable the two versions of BGBP to be converted freely and traded on Binance Jersey and Binance DEX.”
The token appears to have moved from the drawing board to reality in short order. CEO Zhao had first floated the possibility of Binance developing its own fiat-pegged tokens in public comments back in the spring.
The BGBP will surely precede other Binance-backed stablecoins, though the company hasn’t specified what fiat currencies may be next on the slate.
One thing is for sure: Binance is on a roll. The company just launched its new margin trading platform as part of its “Binance 2.0” campaign. The exchange has also recently announced plans for a cryptocurrency futures platform and Binance US, an operation that will cater to U.S. cryptocurrency traders.
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William M. Peaster, Khareem Sudlow