Binance is trying to poach US retail users with maker fee set to 0%

Binance.US has reduced spot trading fees to 0% for makers and 0.02% for takers across all trading pairs, extending near-zero pricing to all users without volume thresholds or subscription requirements.

The new pricing replaces the platform’s tiered fee structure and applies to all accounts, with the company saying the move could reduce trading costs by as much as 98% compared with competitors such as Coinbase. — Cointelegraph report

I smell blood

Not sure if people realize but there's intense battles in the finance markets. Traditional finance and DeFi is converging, both crypto-native companies and TradFi players are fighting for staying competitive and survival.

The move from Binance.US isn't from a place of strength, but weakness. Giving up margin for volume is a clear signal of underperformance relative to targets.

At the time of the announcement, Binance.US recorded just $14.8 million in 24-hour trading volume, ranking among the lowest on CoinGecko.

That figure needs to be held against the competitive reality: Binance.US's share of U.S. dollar-supporting exchange volume has collapsed from around 10% to just 0.20%, with daily volume at approximately $15.5 million compared to Coinbase's $2.9 billion and Kraken's $1.3 billion.

The collapse has a traceable cause. The exchange's market share fell sharply after the SEC filed its lawsuit in June 2023, and banking partners severed relationships, forcing the platform to suspend USD deposits.

It operated as a crypto-only exchange for 19 months until February 2025, when it finally restored fiat deposit and withdrawal services. Even after the lawsuit was dropped, the user base did not return. This fee cut is therefore less an offensive strike from a position of strength, and more a structural attempt to restart growth from a severely depleted base.

The DEX Pressure

Although there's frequent emphasis that Binance and Binance.US are two separate entities, it helps to understand that one is the reason the other can exist with constraints.

That said, both face a greater market presence.

Both the TradFi entrants into crypto and the Binance.US fee cut are framed around competition between centralized platforms. But the deeper structural threat to all of them is the growing share of on-chain, decentralized trading.

DEX market share in the spot market has doubled over two years, growing from 6.9% in January 2024 to 13.6% in January 2026, with monthly trading volume more than doubling from $95.86 billion to $231.29 billion.

DEX trading volume rose approximately 37% in 2025, with an average monthly volume of roughly $412 billion.

In perpetuals, the growth is even more pronounced: the perpetual futures market grew 75% over two years, and DEX perp market share expanded from 2.0% to 10.2%, with Hyperliquid alone processing $1.59 trillion in volume between August 2025 and January 2026, which is enough to rank among major centralized exchanges, according to Coinspot report.

When it comes to decentralized exchanges (DEXs), fees are structured differently.

Protocol fees on platforms like Uniswap see fees as low as 0.05% to 0.01% on certain pairs, and swap aggregators route orders for minimal cost. When Binance.US announces that it now offers "the lowest fees of any major U.S. exchange," it is still more expensive than permissionless on-chain execution for a technically literate user.

The fee war among centralized platforms is being fought over the retail user who still value centralized custody, fiat rails, and customer support, a segment that is undoubtedly real and large, but is gradually being eroded from below.

Like I said, I smell blood in this attempt from Binance.US to poach US retail with maker fee set to 0%.

Posted Using INLEO