How to Steal a Domain
twitter.com
twitter.com
1. Regardless of when it was purchased, there is always a "project" behind it that has never materialized.
2. There will be some dated fragments of said "project" like a Internet Archive page showing it was once going to be something but it usually never was anything but a ploy to avoid looking like a squatter.
UDRP rules are pretty clear about bad faith registrations and most country TLD's (including CIRA, the .ca domain) use the UDRP to solve disputes.
If you own a domain, regardless of when it was registered, each year you renew you are 're-signing' under the terms of the UDRP.
It should be obvious to the registrant, that the domain will cause confusion with a clearly held trademark. If you are in Crypto, you know Binance. Them making an offer and someone countering demonstrates they are willing to sell the domain.
Filing a UDRP dispute by the trademark holder will cost approx $5k+ USD. They made an offer worth roughly that to avoid a lengthy battle, but if the registrant won't go for it and demands a ridiculously high price for something they clearly aren't using, it's cheaper to just hire a firm and just go through the UDRP process to seize the domain. Many companies don't do that, but it's an option.
I was involved in something similar where we just paid the squatter $7k vs. going through the UDRP process. It sucked, but it was definitely faster and less complicated.
When it's all over, I predict taking the $6500 they offered will have been easier and less expensive for this individual. Their out of pocket costs are in the (hundreds) so that could have been a tidy profit.
I think it's fairly reasonable to assume that he bought it because of the binance launch considering the timeline, his interest in crypto and that the term binance has basically 0 mentions on for example google trends before 2017.
Moral of the story: Don't entertain offers to sell unless that was your real intention all along.