New York, NY, September 28, 2026, Chainwire

BNB Chain has appointed Thomas Chen as Chief Business Officer, a newly created leadership role focused on revenue strategy, institutional partnerships, and long-term value accrual for the BNB Chain ecosystem. The move consolidates revenue strategy and institutional partnership decisions under a single executive as public blockchains compete with legacy payment rails for settlement volume.

The appointment arrives as traditional finance moves onchain in earnest. Banks, asset managers, and payment processors have gone well beyond pilot programs this year, issuing tokenised deposits and money market funds, building 24/7 settlement rails, and routing institutional liquidity through public blockchains. The scale of the shift is reflected in settlement data: stablecoins settled $7.2 trillion in February 2026, surpassing the U.S. ACH network, the backbone of American payments, for the first time.

BNB Chain is already one of the main venues for this activity. According to RWA.xyz, it is the second-largest blockchain for real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation, with more than $5.6 billion in total locked (TVL), and it leads all networks with 15 million monthly active stablecoin addresses.

Chen brings deep traditional finance (TradFi) experience across custody, market structure, and institutional sales. In his new role, he will apply that expertise to BNB Chain's effort to bring more stablecoin issuers, RWA platforms, and institutional capital onto the network. His remit spans four areas:

• Institutional and capital markets: asset managers, banks, custodians, and real-world asset issuers, together with the confidentiality and compliance infrastructure that regulated institutions require before they transact onchain.
• Stablecoins and settlement: issuer partnerships, cross-border payment rails, and agentic payment flows, with the goal of making BNB Chain the default venue for dollar settlement.
• Trading and liquidity: market makers, exchanges, and trading venues, deepening market quality and onchain volume.
• Ecosystem and distribution: protocols, wallets, and market infrastructure, connecting builders to the largest distribution surface in crypto.

Thomas Chen, Chief Business Officer at BNB Chain, said: "BNB Chain has the largest user base in crypto, the deepest liquidity in the industry behind it, and a once-in-a-cycle window as real-world assets and AI-agent activity move onchain. My focus is making sure that activity settles here – more volume, deeper markets, and the institutional infrastructure serious capital require before it moves onchain."

Chen joins BNB Chain from Function, a Bitcoin yield protocol that scaled to $1.6 billion in TVL, where he served as chief executive officer. Before that, he was Managing Director and Global Head of Sales at BitGo, where he grew assets under custody to more than $100 billion and helped set the company's course toward an initial public offering (IPO). His career spans 15 years, more than seven of which were spent building commercial teams across digital asset infrastructure, covering institutions in both traditional finance and decentralized finance (DeFi). That custody-and-sales background maps directly onto the institutional onboarding mandate at the center of his new role.

For readers tracking the appointment, the stated remit offers concrete markers to watch: new stablecoin issuer partnerships, the rollout of confidentiality and compliance tooling for regulated institutions, and shifts in market-maker participation and onchain volume across trading venues – each tied to one of the four pillars of Chen's mandate.

About BNB Chain

BNB Chain is one of the largest and most active blockchain ecosystems in the world. Its multi-chain architecture spans BNB Smart Chain (BSC), opBNB, and BNB Greenfield, giving developers the flexibility to choose the environment best suited to their applications. With high throughput, low transaction costs, and full EVM compatibility, BNB Chain is built for high-speed trading, AI agents, privacy, and instant payments. The network is designed for global markets and the next billion users, with superior distribution and deep liquidity. More information is available at www.bnbchain.org.

Press contact: BNB Chain — press@bnbchain.org

Source: Chainwire