Crypto exchange Binance has added a "monitoring tag" to certain cryptocurrencies, including privacy coins Monero, Zcash, Horizen, and Firo. Tokens with the monitoring tag are subject to regular reviews and are at risk of being delisted from the exchange if they no longer meet listing criteria. Users are required to pass a quiz to trade tokens marked with the monitoring tag. Binance's decision to mark privacy coins with a monitoring tag comes as the exchange has opened its books to monitoring by US financial regulators and law enforcement, following its multi-billion-dollar settlement with US regulators.

Binance stated in a blog post on its official website that due to the fact that cryptocurrency is a new industry, scams are becoming more frequent and complex. Therefore, it is necessary for users to constantly learn about the latest prevention methods. Binance's risk control measures are divided into 8 levels based on the strength of the fraud risk, ensuring a balance between user experience and security. These 8 levels are in order from low to high: custom pop-up notifications, interactive risk assessment forms, global malicious address database alerts, freezing small profits, 1-hour cooling-off period, 24-hour cooling-off period, chat dissuasion, and alert services.

On January 4th, Binance Labs announced its investment in Memecoin (MEME), the native ecosystem token of Memeland. Memeland's core focus is on building and investing in SocialFi and creator economies, utilizing meme internet culture to connect creators and communities through its MEME token and NFTs.

Binance will list ICP/FDUSD, LDO/FDUSD, and MOVR/TRY spot trading pairs at 16:00 on January 5, 2024, providing users with more spot trading options. In addition, Binance will open trading robot services for the following trading pairs at 16:00 on January 5, 2024: Spot grid, spot DCA (dollar-cost averaging), intelligent position: ACE/USDT

According to Kaiko, a cryptocurrency intelligence platform, the market share of Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, dropped significantly to 44.5% last year. This decline followed a three-year upward trend, with Binance's market share skyrocketing from 22% in 2020 to a peak of 60% in 2022. However, regulatory barriers in multiple jurisdictions subsequently led to a decline in its market share over the past year. Due to regulatory compliance issues, Binance exited several countries in Canada, the UK, and Europe, including Austria, Cyprus, and the Netherlands in 2023.

Binance announced that due to significant market volatility and to provide users with a better trading experience, the USDC-based perpetual contracts for BTC, ETH, BNB, SOL, and XRP, originally scheduled to launch on January 3, 2024 at 20:30 (GMT+8), will be postponed and launched on January 4, 2024 at 20:30 (GMT+8).

Binance customer service support team released an announcement stating that they are aware that a few users have encountered issues when accessing the Binance platform. The team is currently handling these issues and in most cases, the problems should have already been resolved.

Binance-BNB/USDT is currently trading at $297.90, with a 24-hour decrease of 5.39%.

BNB has broken through 330 USDT and is currently trading at 332.9 USDT, with a 24-hour increase of 4.13%.

Binance has announced its 43rd Launchpool project Xai (XAI), a game blockchain built on Arbitrum. Users will be able to stake BNB, FDUSD, and TUSD in different pools to mine XAI tokens for four days starting on January 5, 2024. Binance will list XAI on January 9, 2024, and open multiple trading pairs.

Binance will remove the following spot trading pairs and suspend trading: ANT/BNB, DAR/EUR, HIGH/BNB, HOOK/BNB, LOKA/BNB, RPL/BTC, and XTZ/TRY starting at 11:00 on January 5, 2024 (UTC+8). Binance will also remove trading robot services (if applicable) for the above spot trading pairs at the same time. It is strongly recommended that users close and/or cancel relevant spot trading robots before the trading robot services for the above trading pairs are stopped to avoid potential losses.

On January 3rd, it was reported that in the absence of Zhao Changpeng, He Yi became the largest shareholder within Binance, with broad control over its marketing and investment departments. Sources familiar with the board recruitment process stated that He Yi exercised her influence in the election of Binance's new independent majority shareholder board. Insiders familiar with the exchange's financial situation stated that she holds at least 10% of the shares in Binance's Cayman Islands holding company. According to sources familiar with the negotiation situation, during early settlement discussions, the Justice Department had hoped that He Yi would also leave, but it is unclear why this ultimately did not happen. A spokesperson for Binance did not comment on He Yi's role in the case, but stated that the company has acknowledged past mistakes and made improvements. The spokesperson stated that He Yi supported this change.

Binance has announced the addition of new borrowable assets and trading pairs on cross and isolated margin. The exchange plans to expand margin trading for popular cryptocurrencies such as Solana, BNB, NFPrompt, and SEI. The new margin pairs are available for immediate trading. Binance has also added NFPrompt and Enzyme as new borrowable assets on cross and isolated margin, and is expanding USDC support on the platform with new pairs such as BNB/USDC. The exchange has also updated its Coin-Margined Futures Liquidity Provider Program.

Binance Futures has updated the leverage and margin tiers for its USDT-margined perpetual contracts and coin-margined perpetual contracts, as shown in the table below.

Binance CEO Richard Teng announced in the 2023 annual summary that the number of registered Binance users increased by 30% to a total of 170 million.Binance's investigation team processed over 53,000 law enforcement requests in 2023 (an increase of 3,000 compared to the previous year) and invested $213 million in compliance plans, a 35% increase from last year's $158 million. Binance also continues to invest in leading KYC suppliers and product solutions.

Binance has burned 5.57 billion Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) tokens in its 17th batch of the LUNC burn mechanism, bringing the total number of tokens burned to over 49 billion. The burn caused LUNC and USTC prices to rise by over 7%. Binance has burned 49.17 billion Terra Classic tokens from trading fees on LUNC spot and margin trading pairs, contributing to the community burning nearly 92.5 billion LUNC tokens. Traders should be aware of a possible pullback in prices due to potential profit booking in the next few days.

On December 31st, according to the Snapshot governance page, the GMX community initiated a proposal to create a BNB market on GMX V2 (Arbitrum), with the aim of determining whether to establish a BNB market in the deployment of GMX V2 on the Arbitrum Mainnet. The vote will end on January 3, 2024.

Binance stated in its official tweet that in 2023, users searched for Binance a total of 60 million times (5 million times per month), making it the most searched cryptocurrency exchange.

BNB Chain has released its 2023 annual report, stating that the number of daily active users exceeded 1 million in the past year, with a significant increase. The second-layer expansion solution opBNB and the blockchain storage platform Greenfield have both been launched on the mainnet. On December 17th, opBNB set a new record for daily transaction volume with over 23 million transactions. In addition, BNB Chain provides a monthly reward of up to $160,000 for projects with high total lock-up amounts on opBNB, as well as a monthly BNB token incentive worth $200,000 for projects ranking in the top ten in terms of daily active users. In the latest roadmap, BNB Chain plans to increase the transaction speed of opBNB by more than double and reduce Gas fees by 10 times.

Binance has stated on social platform X that the display issue with the BTC/USDT contract has been resolved.