How long will it take for Binance to earn 4 billion? Calculated, 4 billion is roughly Binance's revenue for one year in a bear market.
Coinbase's Q3 financial report provides a good reference sample:
Q3 trading revenue was 288.6 million dollars, and the market share was about 5%-7%.
Binance's market share in "spot" is about 7-10 times that of Coinbase, so Binance's revenue in "spot" every quarter looks like 2-2.88 billion.
But Coinbase's "efficiency" in making money is significantly higher than Binance: CB can earn 3.8 million spread in Q3 (288.6 million in revenue, 76 billion in trading volume). On Binance, the taker/maker of the most ordinary users is 0.1%. For institutional users, Binance can only provide 1bp maker rebate and 2.4bp taker at most. So Binance can earn a spread of -1bp+10bp=9bp at most (that is, institutions provide makers, and retail investors act as takers. Another situation where institutions act as takers and retail investors act as makers is ridiculous and almost non-existent). Therefore, it can be deduced that Coinbase's earning efficiency is guaranteed to be 4 times that of Binance. In summary, Binance may earn 500-770 million in spot trading every quarter. If you include rebates, Binance may earn about 500 million every quarter.
Calculating the contract market again, the trading volume of the contract market in Q3 reached the industry's "freezing point": a total of 6.1 trillion, Binance's market share is about 50%, about 3.1 trillion.
Although the contract market is large in volume, it is not actually very "profitable". For example, in Binance, the most ordinary user's fee rate is 1.8bp maker and 4.5bp taker, while the most powerful market maker's maker fee rate is 0.5bp, so Binance can earn a maximum of 4bp in Spread.
According to the 4bp spread, Binance can earn about 1.2 billion in Q3, but this number needs to be discounted, such as the rebate needs to be included, and the transaction situation needs to be considered (how can it be possible to earn 4bp for every transaction?). If we roughly give a 50% discount (after all, the rebate is quite high), then Binance can earn 600 million in Q3.
Adding spot and contract together, Binance earns about 1.1 billion per quarter. The 4 billion fine is very similar to Binance's annual income in the "bear market" (leaving aside businesses such as staking and mining pools). In this case, it seems that the DOJ's calculation is "quite reasonable".
BTW, if it is in a bull market, the exchange's business volume and profits often increase by more than ten times.
