My point is, 'If I'm going to trust a centralized entity, at least allow me to profit for doing so'.
You're not incorrect. Technically BTCB is a Bitcoin 'token' backed by binance (backed by BTC held by binance I mean). You can check more details here:
https://bscscan.com/token/0x7130d2a12b9bcbfae4f2634d864a1ee1ce3ead9c
The difference is that you can hold this on your own wallet (& ledger) and treat those BTC like a BEP20 token (ERC20 version of Binance Smart Chain). So you're paying almost 0 fees.
Regarding the centralization of the chain, it has 21 validators currently (validator = witness). Honestly, I think that 'decentralization' is a process and nothing can be 100% from the beginning.
At this moment, Binance SMart Chain is CENTRALIZED (As far as I know the majority of validators are selected by binance), but 'NON-CUSTODIAL'.
For comparison, we could say that BSC is similar to NEO (The consensus model is a copy, in fact).
Hope it helps. I encourage everyone to test it out, IMHO is a great way to learn about ETH but without the fees.
Have a good day.
RE: (Bitcoin Challenge Update) - Moving away from Celsius, say hello to Venus.