Why is it said that Binance's listing dilemma is an inevitable outcome?

Author: 0xTodd

I am not afraid of offending people—"The dilemma of listing on Binance" is an inevitable outcome, and the redemption plan is very cruel.

1. Traditional Listing vs Crypto Listing

The two most important purposes of traditional company listings are:

1. To refinance and expand production;

2. To provide endorsement;

Both are aimed at giving the enterprise a competitive advantage in business, thereby creating more profits for itself and its shareholders.

Additionally, there are:

3. Exiting for founders and investors;

4. Incentivizing employees;

The former is a true benefit and encourages more businesses to emerge in society; the latter gains a competitive advantage by increasing employee loyalty.

Importance: 1 > 2 > 3 > 4

This is why people used to say "capital will self-reproduce," because all goals ultimately end in: earning more money through competitive advantages.

Moreover, many companies do not even want to go public, such as ByteDance and Huawei, because they are already making enough money and no longer need to expand their competitive advantages through refinancing.

The harsh reality of our industry is clear to everyone: 99% of crypto projects do not make money.

The purpose of expanding competitive advantages simply does not exist from the very beginning. Investing in reproduction is meaningless; the more you invest, the greater the loss.

So only purposes 3 and 4 remain, which are the exit for founders, investors, and employees.

2. Benefits and Obligations

Traditional listings have strict requirements and obligations:

Before listing: There must be a capable sponsor for the IPO, which at least proves that the founders and business model are not problematic, making the founders aware that this opportunity is expensive and should not be mishandled; sponsors also highly value their reputation (license) and will not use excessive off-the-books tactics.

However, the problem with crypto protocols is that they enjoy the benefits of traditional listings: investor exits/incentivizing employees…

Yet they do not bear any of the obligations of traditional listings:

Before listing, the project party has no sponsor, and many founders are completely unaware that listing is a serious matter. On the contrary, everyone is an anonymous project and does not consider future reproduction at all.

So—bribery/fraud/manipulation/deception, all tactics are of course "fully utilized," because there will be no punishment!

3. No Punishment

Important things are worth repeating three times:

No punishment;

No punishment;

No punishment;

The project party will not be punished, the exchange employees will not be punished, and the exchange itself will certainly not be punished.

3.1 Project Party

The heaviest punishment for the project party is being blacklisted by the exchange.

But what does being blacklisted even mean?

Using a classic hypothetical question, if you have a red button in front of you:

A. 50% chance to gain 10 million;

B. 50% chance to never be able to press this button again;

Would you press it? You would press it 100 times immediately—what kind of punishment is this?

3.2 Exchange Employees

You could say that Binance and Coinbase have punishments for bribed employees—criticism, dismissal, or even theoretically pursuing legal responsibility.

However, gathering evidence is extremely difficult. Crypto is the hardest asset to trace in the world, and it is used even by Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Our industry has the best infrastructure for privacy in the world:

I chat using Signal or TG private chat;

I trade using some cross-chain bridges or even mixers;

I withdraw using some third-tier exchanges that do not require KYC.

Even if Interpol personally investigates, they may not be able to crack it. Your mere internal audit department of an exchange has no right to claim they can solve corruption.

Moreover, the implementation of corruption is also extremely covert:

Just say a few nice words internally at the exchange and give a few pointers at the project party meeting.

In fact, as long as you choose to remain silent when the leadership is in an information bubble—you have completed the entire bribery process.

So, as Jocy said, project parties specifically bribe KOLs that the exchange bosses care about. Your internal secret police in the exchange, even if Chen Lifu and Mao Renfeng were resurrected, could not solve this; it is an unsolvable conspiracy.

3.3 The Exchange Itself

Let’s imagine the exchange as a physical entity.

If a coin goes live and drops 90%, then drops another 90% a year later, compared to launching a tenfold coin, it’s just that the former makes less money, and the latter makes more.

Yes, you’ve realized that exchanges can still make money by listing junk coins; they won’t lose money.

And the punishment in terms of reputation cannot be quantified at all; exchanges will not set up a department to specifically track changes in reputation. Offending leaders and colleagues, with no profit involved, no one will do it.

So, what kind of punishment is this? Listing a junk coin, and the punishment is "making a little less money"?

Is this even a punishment?

4. Financial Disclosure

After traditional companies go public, they regularly disclose financial statements, and countless short-selling institutions and retail investors scrutinize the financial reports.

Take a well-known example: due to PwC taking on the Evergrande case, they are still being criticized to the point of being unable to manage themselves, and more critically, PwC was fined a massive 320 million yuan by regulators.

However, after crypto projects go public, let alone financial disclosures, even the flow of funds in the on-chain treasury is hard to clarify.

Project parties can freely dispose of the money obtained from selling off, whether to buy luxury houses, hold yacht parties, date, or even research immortality; the only certainty is that they will not reinvest to expand production.

This is the crux of the problem—after listing, selling off/cashing out is not a problem in itself, but the issue is that cashing out without reinvesting in production leads to a cycle of blood loss.

5. Solutions

The root of the problem is deep and serious, and the only solution is: stop listing coins, stop listing coins, stop listing coins.

As long as crypto projects have not fundamentally solved the "lack of income" problem, listing coins has no meaning:

Listing a coin that directly drops 90% is just a quick way to cut off all users;

Listing a coin that first rises tenfold and then traps at the top helps smart users cut off foolish users.

It’s just a case of fifty steps laughing at a hundred steps; the latter looks better on the surface, as if it’s a skillful cut, the so-called "gave an opportunity."

Warning: If exchanges continue to adopt the current listing strategy, they will gradually be eroded or even replaced by DEX; it’s just a matter of time.

I wouldn’t be surprised if one day, a Telegram Bot captures 5-10% of the market share from BN, CB, and UB.

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Now let’s enter fantasy time: the fundamental solution: set up two sites, a main site + a community site.

【Main Site】 Gradually Shrink

Immediately stop listing coins, and if more aggressively, gradually eliminate the previously listed tokens.

【Community Site】 Newly Established

The newly established community site adopts a DEX model, meaning a registration system where every project can list coins fairly.

Let me ask, when has Uniswap or Raydium ever been criticized for listing tens of thousands of tokens daily?

When has Hayden Adams ever been bribed? Even Alpha Ray, whose name is fake, doesn’t need to create an information bubble.

There may be growing pains, but the benefit is:

In the future, listing on Binance or Coinbase will no longer be the endpoint for project parties; instead, it will be the starting point for striving to create amazing applications (otherwise, they won’t make money).

Value discovery will be completely handed over to the community, rather than the listing group or investment department. The registration system can perfectly solve the question of "why is BN always the last to know."

If there are tomorrow's crypto stars inside, they certainly won’t miss out.

And the junk coins inside will never deceive more people through unfair means.

I look forward to that day; this decision is both great and cruel.

However, once successful, it could even reverse the entire industry’s atmosphere, stopping the trend of To Binance and To Coinbase, and thus giving birth to a truly killer app like ChatGPT.

Never go against human nature;

Never go against business laws.