Why and how do developers burn their tokens, and what benefit do investors get?

Cryptocurrency burn is an intentional destruction of a certain number of tokens in circulation. Many cryptocurrency projects use this mechanism to regulate issuance. Tokens can be destroyed for several reasons: for example, in order to increase token prices. Burning some coins makes each remaining token more in demand and its price goes up.

Cryptocurrencies are also withdrawn from circulation to prevent inflation and depreciation of assets. With unlimited issuance, the amount of coins is constantly increasing, and each individual token gradually depreciates in price. Then developers conduct incineration to prevent fall of cryptocurrency’s price. Thus, there is always about the same amount of cryptocurrency in circulation. Volumes and frequency of this operation depend on the speed of issuance.

Some projects destroy coins after ICO if not the entire amount of cryptocurrency was sold during campaign. In this case, developers retain price of coins already purchased by investors.

How to burn cryptocurrencies

Commission Burn

Transaction fees are usually sent to miners. But there are cryptocurrency projects in which these funds are burned. To do this, a transaction is conducted in which fees are set at an amount required to be burned. Sent tokens remain in blockchain, and excess funds are “burned” by this system.

Contract algorithm burns tokens

Sometimes developers initially put a Proof-of-Burn algorithm on blockchain. When a transaction takes place, miners send some of coins to a special address that no one else has access to. This transaction is recorded in blockchain, which is proof-of-burn for tokens.

Burning in a dead wallet

A lot of projects use burn through a wallet with no private keys. Amounts that need to be destroyed are sent to it. There is no access to such a wallet. Therefore, any interaction with tokens at such an address is unavailable. Projects openly publish data on such wallets and burn operations.

Consider large Cryptoprojects that burn their tokens

Ethereum

In August 2021, ETH ecosystem updated and changed its fee structure. Transaction fees in a block (for gas) began to be sent partly to network for burning and partly to miners as rewards. Today, major Ethereum “burners” are NFT-marketplace Opensea and crypto-platform Uniswap. Volume of token destruction is about 900,000 ETH per year.

Binance Coin

In 2017, Binance issued 20 million BNB and announced plans to burn tokens quarterly and will do so until half of their tokens are destroyed. From end of 2021, amount of tokens to be burned is calculated automatically and depends on the number of transactions on exchange.

Binance also destroys a portion of the BNB Chain gas fee in real time. Exchange practices burning by transferring money to an address that is not available for use.

Tron

Project developers use the same token destruction method. Total number of TRX tokens burned is approaching 8 billion.

Ripple

Cryptocurrency’s algorithm has had a token burning mechanism from the very beginning. Each transaction destroys 0.00001 XRP. The concept of the project implies a certain number of coins. Which should not increase, which, according to developers’ idea, will allow avoiding inflation. At the same time, this algorithm reduces numbers of spam transactions.

Many different cryptocurrency projects like Shiba Inu, Stellar, BabyDoge, Elastos, Optimism and others are actively practicing coin flaring to attract investors’ attention.

Who benefits from token burning and what investors get from it

By burning coins, developers buy them back with their own money, or somehow sacrifice part of their profits. However, still remaining holders of this cryptocurrency, they are betting that asset will grow in value in future. Coin destruction is done to make cryptoprojects more successful and attract more holders.

Burning tokens can be compared to buying back shares in a normal financial market. Companies buy back their securities in order to reduce their number on market and strengthen their quotes. This strengthens position of shareholders and company.

At the same time, burning coins can strengthen reputation of a crypto project. Destruction of tokens left unsold after the initial offering. Increases the level of trust in developers and contributes to the growth of the token price on the crypto market.

Investors also benefit when a project burns unsold tokens after an ICO. Using this type of tool shows that developers believe in their project and that their cryptocurrency will grow in the long run.

Our Crypto-Upvotes experts believe that burning coins does not guarantee an increase or stabilization of price. If project is not in demand, reducing the number of tokens will not affect its price in any way. Also, one should not rule out effects of general market conditions. In periods of increased uncertainty, destruction of a cryptocurrency may not have desired effect.

Even experienced investors sometimes find it hard to know which of the many young crypto projects is worth investing in. Our experts explain what kind of returns startup coins can bring. What is IDO and where their liquidity collections take place.

Raising capital for companies from a wide range of investors is a critical mechanism for creting new businesses in today’s economy. Crypto assets market is no exception and has its own formats similar to IPO model.

Almost everyone who has encountered cryptocurrencies knows what an ICO is and what happened to this market in 2018. In fact, ICO market is dead after the 2018 bubble, subsequently SEC severely restricted them. Statistics say that about 90% of all ICO ended up failing.

But having gone through a crypto winter, crypto market did not get rid of the natural need for liquidity inflows to nascent projects, which is where the new era of IDO and launchpad started.

To participate in IDO of a project, you will need, as in case of IPO, to get an allocation to buy tokens at a low price before their release on exchange. This is where the main investor profit is hidden. Launchpad already has quite a few – more than 70 platforms. As of today, almost $1 billion has been raised through them. And the average increase in investment was X25. It looks very good for investors, but there are big risks hidden here as well.

Analysis of IDO profits on several major launchpads

We decided to check some of major launchpads (Polkastarter and DAO Maker). And analyze their data based on Cryptorank data. Despite popularity of these platforms, we can immediately notice that each of them individually does not raise hundreds of millions of dollars. On average by platform, each project raises about $261,000. The average profitability on 2 platforms was 5%. In fact, this is the yield since the listing of project. In this material, we provide figures as of early June. When bitcoin was trading above $30,000 and cryptocurrency market was not at bottom as it is today.

Our Crypto-Upvotes experts decided to take a detailed study of one of most popular launch pads – Polkastarter.

The largest number of projects that raised funds on Polkastarter belong to the DeFi category. A total of 38 DeFi projects were placed on the platform. Of these, only 21% did not fall below listing price at end of day. Also of note are the indicators related to token price at historical highs (ATH). Indeed, if you held any new token placed on Polkastarter DeFi for an average of 21 days. You could hope for yields as high as 4,900%. But given the “survival rate” of projects, that would be a veritable casino with no chance of a fundamental prediction.

Most optimal IDO segment on Polkastarter turned out to be the projects serving the blockchain infrastructure. They showed lower returns on almost all metrics. However, with a more limited sample of 11 projects, 27% of projects traded above listing price as of early June, which is the best result across all segments of this platform.

Conclusion

It’s been 4 years since ICO bubble burst, 2 of which turned out to be very “depressing” for the crypto industry. On average, on the 2 largest launchpads, 73% of all projects today are trading below listing price. Thus, participating in project offerings on launchpads for long-term investors seems like a bad idea. Launchpads can be seen as part of a risky portfolio and sell project tokens for a very short period of time after they go to exchange. You should also be extremely careful when buying new project tokens. Once a project has been launched, you have little time to make a decision to sell. You run risks ending up with a token belonging to the same 73% of projects that are now selling below launch price.