Unlike comparable peers like Ethereum (ETH) and Avalanche (AVAX), BNB has rather limited use cases. Thus far, its use cases remains almost entirely on decentralised exchanges, lending protocols and liquid staking which Kendrick says makes it a much more ‘concentrated’ and ‘old fashioned’ smart contact platform compared to ETH and AVAX.
BNB’s use cases have remained low largely due to low developer numbers but while this factor limits BNB’s potential upsides, they still remain the token of Binance which is one of the biggest centralised exchanges (CEX) in the world.
Assuming Binance maintains its position as a CEX, Kendrick does not expect value drivers for BNB to change for the foreseeable future and believes that BNB could take up the role of being a “benchmark” for prices of digital assets.
“BNB has traded almost exactly in line with an unweighted basket of Bitcoin and Ethereum since May 2021 in terms of both returns and volatility. We expect this relationship to hold, driving BNB’s price,” Kendrick states.
While his estimates signal an underperformance of the token compared to his estimates on Bitcoin and Ethereum in the next few years, the deflationary nature of the token with an inflation rate of -5.3% year-on-year and its deep links to such a large CEX like Binance is sufficient in supporting its value in the long term.
BNB’s low developer count is very likely due to BNB’s centralised nature and compared to peers like AVAX, the blockchain has fewer developers despite having a sizeably larger market cap.
Similar to the case of Ripple (XRP), low developer counts could pose a headwind to BNB’s future growth but recent and forthcoming upgrades such as the Pascal hard fork in Feb 2025 and the upcoming Maxwell upgrade in June this year that might help attract more developers which will undoubtedly be a positive for BNB.
As of May 8, BNB Coin is trading at US$617, a 54% downside to Standard Chartered’s end-2025 forecast price.
