Binance.US has opted not to impose any fees for spot trades of Bitcoin to US dollars and three popular stable coins, Tether, USDC, and Binance USD which saw the plunging of Coinbase and Robinhood.
The Binance.US decision led to the shares of Robinhood being currently down while those of Coinbase are down by as much as 5%.
Binance aims to attract more users
Binance.US CEO Brian Shroder told Bloomberg that he thinks that this announcement will generate positive user sentiment and attract more users.
Binance.US already has a low spot and general trading fees. Forbes Advisor listed Binance.US as number 1 amongst all cryptocurrency exchanges in the US, due to its industry-low costs.
Binance.US has confirmed that it would not profit from zero fees for crypto trading.
How This Differs From Coinbase and Robinhood
Robinhood also offers commission-free crypto trading, however, traders do have to pay the spread. Moreover, while Binance.US will not make on free crypto trading, Robinhood makes a lucrative sum by getting rebates from market makers.
Instead of sending customer orders to large exchanges, Robinhood uses a mechanism called payment for order flow to send them to partner market maker firms instead, who then pay Robinhood a rebate. Gary Gensler, the chairperson of the Security and Exchanges Commission, harshly criticized this strategy as having a significant conflict of interest.
Meanwhile, Coinbase’s fees for crypto transactions range from 1% per trade for Coinbase Wallet exchanges to 4% for credit/debit card purchases. Of all the crypto exchanges, it charges some of the highest fees. However, Alesia Haas, the CFO of Coinbase, told CNN that the company’s fees are clear and that it does not receive payment from order flow like Robinhood.
Only time will tell how Coinbase, Robinhood, and other exchanges react as Binance.US competes for users by offering zero fees.
