Author: 0xTodd
I am not afraid of offending people—'the dilemma of token 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:
1. Refinance and expand production;
2. Endorsement;
Both are aimed at giving enterprises a commercial competitive advantage, thereby creating more profits for themselves & shareholders.
Secondly, it also has:
3. Founders and investors exit;
4. Incentivizing employees;
The former is real welfare, encouraging more businesses to emerge in society; the latter gains commercial advantages by increasing employee loyalty.
Importance 1>2>3>4
This is why in the past everyone said 'capital will reproduce itself,' because all goals ultimately end in: earning more money through commercial advantages.
Moreover, many companies even don’t want to go public, like ByteDance and Huawei, because they are already making enough money and no longer need to expand commercial 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 commercial advantages didn’t even *exist* from the start. Investing in reproduction is meaningless; the more you invest, the greater the loss.
Then only purposes 3 and 4 remain, which are the exit of founders, investors, and employees.
2. Welfare and obligations
Traditional listings have strict requirements and obligations:
Before going public: there must be a capable sponsorship institution for the IPO; this step must at least prove that the founders and business model are not too problematic, making the founders realize that this opportunity is expensive and not to mess around; sponsorship institutions also extremely cherish their feathers (licenses) and will not use excessive off-board tricks.
However, the problem with Crypto protocols is that they enjoy the benefits of traditional listings: investor exit/incentivizing employees…
It has not taken on any of the obligations of traditional listings:
Before the listing, project parties do not have a sponsorship institution; 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 methods must be 'fully utilized' because there will be no punishment!
3. Will not be punished
Important things should be said three times:
Will not be punished;
Will not be punished;
Will not be punished;
Project parties will not be punished, exchange employees will not be punished, and the exchanges themselves will not be punished.
3.1 Project Party
The heaviest punishment for project parties is being blacklisted by exchanges.
But what does being blacklisted mean?
Using a classic hypothetical question, if you have a red button in front of you:
A. 50% chance of obtaining 10 million;
B. 50% chance of never being able to press this button again;
Do you press it? You should press it a hundred times right away—what kind of trivial punishment is this?
3.2 Exchange Employees
You could say Binance and Coinbase have punishments for bribed employees—criticism, dismissal, and even theoretically pursuing legal responsibility.
However, collecting evidence is too difficult. Crypto is the hardest asset in the world to trace, and even Russia, Iran, and North Korea are using it. It's important to know that our industry's infrastructure in terms of privacy is the best in the world:
I use Signal or TG for private chats;
I use some cross-chain bridges for trading and even mixers;
I withdraw funds using some third-tier exchanges that do not require KYC.
Even if Interpol investigates personally, it may not be solvable. Your mere internal audit department of an exchange, what basis do you have to claim to resolve corruption?
Moreover, the implementation of corruption is also extremely concealed:
Just say a few nice words within the exchange and give a few pointers in the project party meeting.
Moreover, as long as you choose to remain silent rather than burst the bubble when the leaders are in an information cocoon, you have completed the entire bribery process.
So, as Jocy said, project parties specifically bribe KOLs that the exchange bosses care about. Your internal watchdogs in the exchange, even if Chen Lifu was resurrected, will not solve it; this is an unsolvable conspiracy.
3.3 The exchange itself
Let’s imagine the exchange as a physical entity.
A coin that drops 90% after going live and then drops another 90% a year later is no different from launching a tenfold coin; the former just earns less, while the latter earns more.
Yes, you’ve noticed that exchanges listing trash tokens can even make money; they won’t lose money.
However, the penalties in terms of reputation cannot be quantified, and exchanges will not set up a department specifically to track changes in reputation; offending leaders and colleagues, and with no profit, no one will do it.
So, what kind of punishment is this? The last trash token was punished by 'earning a little less money'?
Is this considered punishment?
4. Financial disclosure
Traditional companies disclose financial statements regularly after going public, and countless short-selling institutions and retail investors dig through the financial reports.
Take a well-known example: due to PwC taking on the Evergrande case, it has been criticized to the point of being unable to care for itself, and more critically, PwC was fined a huge sum of 320 million yuan by regulators.
However, after a Crypto project goes public, not to mention no financial disclosure, even the flow of funds in the on-chain treasury is hard to clarify.
Project parties can freely allocate the money obtained from selling off; they can buy luxury houses, host yacht parties, date, or even research immortality, the only certainty is that they will not reinvest to expand production.
This is the key issue—after the listing, reducing holdings/cashing out itself is not a problem, but the problem is that after cashing out, there is no reinvestment in production, which leads to blood loss circulation.
5. Solutions
The deeper the symptoms, the only solution is: stop listing tokens, stop listing tokens, stop listing tokens.
Before Crypto projects have completely resolved the 'no income at all' issue, listing tokens has no meaning:
The last one directly dropped 90%, which quickly cut off all users;
The last one pulls up tenfold and then traps at the top, which helps smart users cut off dumb users.
It's just fifty steps laughing at a hundred steps; the latter just looks better on the surface, considered as earning it, the so-called 'given a chance'.
Warning: If exchanges continue to adopt the current token listing strategy, they will gradually be eroded or even replaced by DEXs; it’s just a matter of time.
I wouldn’t be surprised if one day, the Telegram Bot captures 5-10% of the shares of BN, CB, and UB.
-------- Divider --------
Now let's enter fantasy time: the fundamental solution: set up two sites, main site + community site.
[Main site] Gradually retracting
Immediately stop listing tokens; if more radical, gradually phase out previously listed tokens.
[Community Station] Newly established
The newly established community site adopts a DEX model, which is a registration system, allowing every project to list fairly.
I ask, when has Uniswap or Raydium ever been criticized for listing tens of thousands of tokens daily?
When has Hayden Adams ever been bribed? Alpha Ray doesn’t even have a real name, and no one needs to create an information cocoon for him.
There may be cramping, but the benefit is:
In the future, going to Binance or Coinbase will no longer be the end point for project parties; instead, it will be the starting point for striving to create impressive applications (otherwise, they won't make money).
Value discovery is completely left to the community, not the token listing group or investment department. A registration system can perfectly solve the problem of 'why BN always gets the last stick'.
If there are rising stars in Crypto, they definitely won't miss out.
And the trash tokens inside will never deceive more people through unfair means.
Looking forward to this day, this decision is both great and cruel.
However, once successful, it can even reverse the entire industry’s ethos, stop the trend of To Binance and To Coinbase, and thus give birth to a truly killer app like ChatGPT.
Never violate human nature;
Never violate business laws.
