Binance, a major cryptocurrency exchange, announced yesterday that the 16th quarterly token burn was completed successfully, removing $393.6 million worth of Binance Coin (BNB) from circulation.

“We've burned 1,296,728 BNB (approximately $393,673,653.52 equivalent) in our 16th quarterly BNB token burn. The current quarterly burn included 1,291,565 BNB in real burns, plus an additional 5,163 BNB burned effectively through the Pioneer Burn Program, according to the exchange.

The quarterly burn is a deflationary mechanism that allows Binance to repurchase and destroy a set quantity of BNB kept in its treasury. The value of destroyed coins is currently equal to 20% of Binance's profit for the previous quarter.

Despite the fact that Binance did not publicly disclose its income, the latest burn implies that the exchange is currently profitable at roughly $2 billion every quarter.

Binance's "Pioneer Burn Program," which was introduced last September, allows the exchange to pay users who sent their BNB to smart contracts from which they were unable to recover the tokens. Binance currently burns (essentially removes out of circulation) these lost tokens as part of covering such losses.

In general, the most recent burn is larger than the prior one, but not in dollar terms. Binance destroyed 1,099,888 BNB on April 16, valued $592 million at the time. Since then, however, the crypto market has dropped by nearly 50% across the board, with most major cryptos still trading at half their April and early May prices.

However, it appears that the most recent large BNB burn had no effect on the token's price. According to crypto analytics platform CoinMarketCap, BNB was trading at roughly $283 at the time of writing, down 7.6% on the day from its all-time high of $690 on May 10.

Despite this, BNB is the fourth-largest digital asset thanks to its market capitalization of roughly $47.5 billion.