Why is Binance's listing dilemma an inevitable outcome?
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Why is Binance's listing dilemma an inevitable outcome?
Solution: The problem is severe and deeply rooted; the only remedy is: stop listing tokens, stop listing tokens, stop listing tokens.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: 0xTodd
I don't mind offending people—Binance's listing dilemma is an inevitable outcome, and the redemption path is extremely harsh.
1. Traditional IPO vs. Crypto Listing
The two most important purposes of a traditional company going public:
1. Raise capital for reinvestment and scale production;
2. Gain credibility;
Both aim to help the company achieve commercial competitive advantages, thereby generating more profits for itself and its shareholders.
Additionally:
3. Founder and investor exits;
4. Employee incentives;
The former is a genuine benefit that encourages more businesses to emerge in society; the latter increases employee loyalty and thus strengthens competitive advantage.
Priority: 1 > 2 > 3 > 4
This is why people have always said "capital reproduces itself"—because all goals ultimately converge on earning more money through commercial advantage.
Moreover, many companies don’t even want to go public—like ByteDance or Huawei—because they already make enough profit independently and no longer need to raise funds to expand their business edge.
The brutal truth in our industry is well known: 99% of crypto projects simply do not generate revenue.
The purpose of expanding commercial advantage never existed from day one. Reinvestment makes zero sense—the more you invest, the greater your losses.
Thus, only objectives 3 and 4 remain: exits for founders, investors, and employees.
2. Benefits vs. Obligations
Traditional IPOs come with strict requirements and obligations:
Pre-IPO: A reputable underwriter must lead the IPO process, which at minimum verifies that the founder and business model aren't fundamentally flawed. This ensures founders understand the opportunity is valuable and should not be abused. Underwriters also highly value their reputation (license) and avoid extreme unethical tactics.
However, the problem with crypto protocols is this: they enjoy the benefits of traditional listings—investor exits, employee incentives, etc.—
But they bear none of the obligations of traditional listings:
Prior to listing, there’s no underwriting body. Many founders don’t even realize that listing is a serious matter. On the contrary, most projects are anonymous and never consider future reinvestment.
Therefore—bribery, fraud, volume manipulation, scams—all tactics are naturally “fully deployed,” because there are no consequences!
3. No Consequences
Say it three times:
No consequences;
No consequences;
No consequences;
Project teams face no consequences, exchange employees face no consequences, and exchanges themselves face no consequences.
3.1 Project Teams
The harshest punishment a project team might receive is being blacklisted by an exchange.
But what does blacklisting really mean?
Borrowing a classic thought experiment: imagine a red button in front of you:
A. 50% chance to win $10 million;
B. 50% chance to never press this button again;
Would you press it? You’d press it 100 times immediately—how is that even a punishment?
3.2 Exchange Employees
You could argue Binance or Coinbase punishes employees who accept bribes—through criticism, termination, or even legal liability in theory.
But gathering evidence is extremely difficult. Crypto is the world’s most untraceable asset—used precisely by countries like Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Our industry leads the world in privacy infrastructure:
I use Signal or Telegram secret chats;
I trade via cross-chain bridges or even mixers;
I cash out through small third-tier exchanges without KYC.
Even Interpol may fail to crack such cases. How can your average exchange internal audit team possibly claim to solve corruption?
And corrupt acts are deeply covert:
A few favorable words inside the exchange, some subtle guidance during project meetings—that’s enough.
Even just staying silent instead of breaking the information bubble when leadership is misinformed—that completes the entire bribery process.
As Jocy once said, projects specifically bribe KOLs whom exchange executives follow. Even if Chiang Kai-shek’s secret police chiefs Chen Lifu and Mao Renfeng were reborn, they couldn’t stop this—it’s an unsolvable open strategy.
3.3 The Exchange Itself
Let’s treat the exchange as a single entity.
Compared to listing a 10x token, listing a scam token that drops 90% first, then another 90% a year later—this merely means less profit versus more profit.
Yes, you’ve realized it: listing junk tokens still earns money for the exchange. They don’t lose anything.
Reputational damage cannot be quantified. Exchanges don’t have departments dedicated to tracking reputation changes—thankless work that angers both bosses and colleagues, with no kickbacks. Nobody will do it.
So what kind of punishment is this? The penalty for listing a junk token is simply “earning slightly less”? Is that even a punishment?
4. Financial Disclosure
After traditional IPOs, companies regularly disclose financial statements, scrutinized endlessly by short-sellers and retail investors alike.
Take a well-known example: PwC took on Evergrande and is still being vilified today. More importantly, regulators slapped PwC with a massive 320 million RMB fine.
Yet after a crypto project lists, let alone regular financial reporting, even tracing treasury fund flows on-chain is nearly impossible.
Founders can freely spend proceeds from token sales—buy mansions, throw yacht parties, date around, or even research immortality. One thing is certain: they won’t reinvest into production.
This is the crux—the act of selling tokens post-listing isn’t the issue. The real problem is failing to reinvest proceeds back into production. That’s a bleeding cycle.
5. Solution
The disease runs deep. The only cure: stop listings, stop listings, stop listings.
Until crypto projects fundamentally resolve the fact that they “simply have no revenue,” listings are meaningless:
List one, it drops 90% immediately—fastest way to rug everyone;
List one, pump it 10x, then dump at the top—helps smart users rug the dumb ones.
Same difference—just prettier optics. The latter claims it “gave people a chance,” so it was earned.
Warning: If exchanges continue current listing strategies, gradual erosion—and eventual replacement—by DEXs is only a matter of time.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if one day a Telegram bot captures 5–10% market share from Binance, Coinbase, and Upbit.
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Now entering fantasy mode: The fundamental solution—create two platforms, Main Site + Community Site.
[Main Site] Gradual Contraction
Immediately halt new listings. More aggressively, gradually delist bottom-ranked tokens over time.
[Community Site] Newly Established
Create a new community site using a DEX model—registration-based, where every project can list fairly.
Tell me, when has Uniswap or Raydium ever been criticized for listing tens of thousands of tokens daily?
When has Hayden Adams ever been bribed? Hell, Alpha Ray doesn’t even have a real name—nobody needs to create an information bubble for him.
There may be short-term pain, but the benefits are clear:
In the future, listing on Binance or Coinbase will no longer be the end goal for projects—but the starting point to build great applications (otherwise, they won’t earn).
Value discovery will be fully delegated to the community, not listing committees or investment departments. A registration system perfectly solves the “why is Binance always the last bagholder” problem.
If a future crypto star exists, it won’t be missed.
And the junk tokens will never deceive more people through unfair means.
I look forward to that day. This decision would be both great and ruthless.
But if successful, it could reverse the entire industry’s culture, ending the race-to-list-on-Binance-or-Coinbase trend, potentially giving birth to true killer apps like ChatGPT.
❌ Never defy human nature;
❌ Never defy business principles.
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@0x_Todd
