Nine years later, Binance serves more than 316 million users across trading, payments, savings, tokenized securities, and traditional asset access. Its evolution from a spot cryptocurrency exchange into an integrated financial platform closely mirrors the broader maturation of the centralized exchange industry itself. A recent CoinDesk Research case study traces that transformation through five distinct phases, illustrating how the role of crypto exchanges has expanded alongside the digital asset economy. Phase 1: Bitcoin-only trading and the fragility of early dominance (2010–2016) Early digital asset trading focused on basic price discovery. The first recorded BTC price sat at $0.003 during a March 2010 trade...