The redemptive solution is extremely cruel, only to stop listing coins.
Written by: Todd
I am not afraid of offending people—'The Binance listing dilemma' is an inevitable outcome, and the redemptive solution is very cruel.
1. Traditional Listing vs Crypto Listing
The two most important purposes of traditional companies going public:
1. Refinance and expand production;
2. Endorsement;
Both are aimed at giving companies a competitive advantage in business, thus creating more profits for themselves & shareholders.
Secondly, it also includes:
3. The exit of founders and investors;
4. Incentivize employees;
The former is true welfare and encourages more business to be born in society; the latter gains business advantages by increasing employee loyalty.
Importance 1>2>3>4
This is why in the past everyone said '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 cruel reality of our industry is clear to everyone; 99% of crypto projects do not make money.
The goal of expanding business advantages simply does not exist from the very beginning. 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. Benefits and Obligations
Traditional listings have strict requirements and obligations:
Before listing: There must be a capable sponsoring institution for the IPO. This step must at least prove that the founder and business model are not problematic, letting the founder know that this opportunity is expensive and should not be messed up; sponsoring institutions also cherish their reputation (licenses) and will not use excessive off-market tricks.
However, the issue with crypto protocols is that they enjoy the benefits of traditional listings: investors exit / incentivize employees...
Yet it has not assumed any obligations of traditional listings:
Before listing, the project team did not have a sponsoring institution, and many founders were completely unaware that listing is a serious matter. On the contrary, everyone was an anonymous project, and they did not consider future reproduction at all.
Therefore—bribery / falsification / volume manipulation / scams, all tricks, of course, are 'to be fully utilized' because there will be no punishment!
3. Will not face punishment
Important things should be said three times:
Will not face punishment;
Will not face punishment;
Will not face punishment;
The project team will not face punishment, exchange employees will not face punishment, and the exchanges themselves certainly will not face punishment.
3.1 Project Team
The heaviest punishment for the project team is being blacklisted by exchanges.
But what does being blacklisted count for?
Using a classic hypothetical question, if there is a red button in front of you:
A. 50% chance to earn 10 million;
B. 50% chance to never be able to press this button again;
Are you pressing it? You better press it 100 times immediately—does this count as some trivial punishment?
3.2 Exchange employees
You could say that Binance and Coinbase have punishments for bribed employees—criticism, dismissal, and even theoretically pursuing legal responsibility.
However, gathering evidence is very difficult. Crypto is the hardest asset in the world to trace; even Russia, Iran, and North Korea use it. It is known that our industry has the best infrastructure regarding privacy in the world:
I use Signal or TG for private chats;
I trade using some cross-chain bridges, or even mixers;
I withdraw funds using some third-tier exchanges that do not require KYC.
Even if Interpol investigates personally, it may not be able to crack it. How dare your mere exchange's internal audit department claim to resolve corruption?
Moreover, the implementation of corruption is also very covert:
Just say a few good words within the exchange and point out a few things in the project team meeting.
Moreover, as long as you choose to remain silent rather than break the bubble when leaders are in an information cocoon, you have completed the entire bribery process.
So, as Jocy said, the project team specifically bribes exchange owners to focus on KOLs. Your internal inspectors within the exchange, even if Chen Lifu and Mao Renfeng were resurrected, would no longer resolve this; it is an unsolvable conspiracy.
3.3 The exchange itself
Let's imagine exchanges as a physical entity.
A coin that goes online and first drops 90%, then drops another 90% after a year, compared to a coin that goes online ten times, is nothing more than the former makes less money while the latter makes more.
Yes, you found it, exchanges list garbage coins, and they are even profitable; they will not lose money.
And the punishment based on reputation is not quantifiable at all. There will be no department in the exchange to specifically track changes in reputation; offending leadership and colleagues, with no benefits, no one will do it.
So, what kind of punishment is this? The punishment for the last garbage coin is 'to earn a little less money'?
Does this count as punishment?
4. Financial Disclosure
Traditional companies disclose financial statements regularly after going public, and they are scrutinized by countless short-selling firms and retail investors reviewing these reports.
Take a well-known example, due to PwC taking on the Evergrande project, they are still being criticized to this day, and more crucially, PwC was fined a huge amount of 320 million.
However, after crypto projects go public, not to mention the lack of financial disclosure, the flow of funds in the on-chain treasury is also very difficult to clarify.
The project team can freely allocate the money obtained from selling off, whether to buy luxury houses, host yacht parties, date, or even research immortality. The only certainty is that they won't reinvest to expand production.
This is the key issue—after listing, selling off/cashing out is not a problem, but the issue is that after cashing out, there is no reinvestment in production, which is a cycle of blood loss.
5. Solutions
The solution is to stop listing coins, stop listing coins, stop listing coins.
Before Crypto projects thoroughly solve the 'lack of income' problem, listing coins has no meaning:
The last one dropped directly by 90%, quickly cutting off all users;
The last one pulls 10 times, and at the top traps smart users, helping to cut dumb users.
It's just fifty steps laughing at a hundred steps; only that the latter looks better on the surface and is considered to be earned through ability, as the saying goes, 'opportunities were given.'
Warning: If exchanges continue to adopt the current coin 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 the Telegram Bot holds 5-10% of BN CB and UB.
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Now entering fantasy time: The fundamental solution: set up two sites, main site + community site.
[Main Station] Gradually shrinking
Immediately stop listing coins, and if more radical, gradually eliminate the previously listed tokens.
[Community Station] Newly established
The newly established community station adopts a DEX model, i.e., a registration system, where every project can list coins fairly.
When have Uniswap or Raydium been criticized for listing tens of thousands of tokens daily?
When has Hayden Adams ever been bribed? Alpha Ray's name is even fake; no one needs to create an information cocoon for him.
There may be growing pains, but the benefit is:
In the future, being listed on Binance or Coinbase will no longer be the end point for the project team; rather, it will be the starting point for striving to create amazing applications (otherwise, they won't make money).
Value discovery is entirely entrusted to the community, rather than the coin listing group or investment department. The registration system can perfectly solve the issue of 'why BN always gets the last stick.'
If there are tomorrow's crypto stars within, it will definitely not miss out.
And the garbage coins inside will never deceive more people through unfair means.
Looking forward to this day, this decision is great yet cruel.
However, once successful, it can even reverse the entire industry culture, stop the trend of 'To Binance' and 'To Coinbase', and thus give birth to a true killer app like ChatGPT.
Never go against human nature;
Never go against business rules.
