The BEST is yet to come: Seventh burn recap

It’s been almost 2 years since the launch of BEST, the Bitpanda Ecosystem Token, and I am grateful to see so many of our users holding BEST, using it to pay for trading premiums and claiming BEST Rewards every single month. While the market is cooling off and the overall market sentiment could be better, we at Bitpanda are not slowing down. Quite the opposite, I might say. We’re relentless in pursuing our goal of bringing the world of investment to the fingertips of everyone, everywhere.

The 7th BEST Burn in a nutshell

We’re happy to see BEST’s popularity growing steadily, which is also reflected in an increasing number of people joining our Telegram groups (both in German and English) around BEST.

In addition to new features and extended tokenomics, token burn events play an important role in our overall BEST strategy. The main reason why tokens are burned can be compared to repurchases (“buy-backs”) of shares offered by public companies. Companies “buy back” shares, thus reducing the supply of circulating shares (shares outstanding), adding to share value and thus benefiting shareholders. As you might have heard, burn events take place on a quarterly basis until 50% of the total BEST supply (initially 1 billion BEST tokens) is destroyed.

During this burn event, which is the seventh in BEST’s history, we destroyed at least 25% of the BEST spent on paying trading premiums on Bitpanda and trading fees on Bitpanda Pro starting from the 29th of April to date. Check out here more information about the seventh BEST burn, including the burn transaction. If you want to find out how much BEST is still in existence, take a look here, under “Max Total Supply”.

In the graph below, you can check out the updated timeline for upcoming BEST burns. The next one will take place on the 28th of October, 2021.

The latest on BEST

Let’s start with BEST Rewards, our loyalty programme that can help you increase your BEST holdings by more than 12% per year. All you need to do is hold BEST on your Bitpanda wallet (not Bitpanda Pro), complete at least one monthly trade of any digital asset and of course, actively claim your rewards on Bitpanda every month. In addition, you can receive more rewards depending on your BEST VIP level and trading volume. Thus, the higher your BEST VIP level and the more you trade, the more rewards you can claim every month. In June alone, more than 85,000 users claimed their rewards amounting to more than 2,500,000 BEST.

Just as a reminder, if you hold BEST on Bitpanda, you can receive a discount of 20% on trading premiums on Bitpanda and on trading fees on Bitpanda Pro. Similarly, as Bitpanda Stocks* is offered commission free, our users have the option to pay the spread** using BEST and get a discount of up to 20%.

I’m also happy to share that 23% of active traders used their BEST to pay premiums on Bitpanda and trading fees on Bitpanda Pro in June. Overall, the past few months have been stable in terms of BEST usage and about a quarter of all trading premiums are now being paid with BEST.

In the world of Bitpanda

A lot of exciting things happened recently in the Bitpanda world. Here are some key things worth mentioning:

• We’ve extended our product offering and launched Bitpanda Stocks*, which allows our 2.7+ million users to invest in fractional stocks 24/7 with no commissions;
• We launched Bitpanda White Label, offering partners like fintechs or banks the opportunity to tap into our state-of-the-art infrastructure and offer trading to their users;

If there’s one thing that’s more important than the product launches, it’s the people that make it happen. This is why I’m also incredibly excited that three amazing persons are joining our leadership team:

• Lindsay Ross, to spearhead our unique culture as our new Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO);
• João Luís to further develop our world-class engineering organisation as VP of Engineering;
• Irina Scarlat as Chief Growth Officer (CGO) with the mission to build Bitpanda into the #1 investment platform in Europe.

Plus, we’ve got plenty more exciting projects coming up, both for BEST and beyond. Stay tuned for more and thank you for being part of the Bitpanda community.

Paul Klanschek

CEO and co-founder of Bitpanda

*Bitpanda Stocks are contracts replicating an underlying stock or ETF. More information and the prospectus are available at bitpanda.com.
**For more information, see the Cost Transparency Document of Bitpanda Stocks.