Author: 1912212.eth, Foresight News
Recently, the overall market has been volatile and declining, and the MEME craze seems to have gradually subsided, but the meme coin TST on the BNB Chain has suddenly become popular.
On February 6, the market value of TST was only $500,000. On February 9, Binance announced its launch, and TST immediately soared to a market value of over $500 million, rising more than 100 times in 3 days. Currently, TST has fallen from its highest point of $0.52 to around $0.17, a retracement of more than 60%.
Originated from an educational video
Recently, the BNB Chain team produced a video tutorial on posting memes on the Four.meme platform. The video used the token TST as an example. This detail was discovered and promoted vigorously by savvy Chinese community KOLs, and soon saw a significant increase in price.
After learning about the hype, the BNB Chain team quickly deleted the private key of the creator's address (holding 0.13% of the total amount of the token), and no one in the team or Binance itself holds the token. Zhao Changpeng also repeatedly clarified on Twitter that it had nothing to do with himself and the team. Perhaps because of its "decentralized" characteristics, the statement did not cause the TST coin price to fall, but instead ushered in a climax of hype again due to its popularity and volume.
However, after it was officially launched on Binance, TST did not get rid of the curse of "falling as soon as it landed on Binance", and soon fell all the way. Another BNB Chain ecological meme CHEEMS that was launched at the same time also could not escape the bad luck, falling from the highest $0.001884 to $0.0007.
After TST was listed on Binance, smart whales chose to take profits. However, as the new coins listed on Binance experienced another sharp drop, the crypto community once again questioned Binance's coin listing level and whether the BNB Chain ecosystem could gain momentum.
The wealth effect is weak, and the community refuses to pay for BSC
As the leading exchange in the crypto industry, Binance has won the market's applause in the past cycles with its strong wealth effect and coin listing effect. Now, with the passage of time, VC coins on exchanges are no longer favored by the market and are generally facing a survival crisis. On the contrary, meme coins on the chain have become a wealth sanctuary that users are eager to get.
This phenomenon has caused the altcoins on the exchange to generally rise weakly, but fall violently. Except for the mainstream currencies, most altcoins have experienced a huge correction in the past two months. Meme coins also experienced a period of decline after Trump concept coins.
Binance is in a dilemma in its spot trading strategy. Listing tokens with a high market value often does not bring high returns, while listing tokens with a small market value carries too high a risk, and large fluctuations may cause many investors to suffer heavy losses. In addition, since its global expansion, Binance has also been plagued by compliance issues, which have affected the advancement of many businesses.
He Yi once said that Binance has a complex listing review process. However, TST, which was launched immediately, landed on Binance just a few days after its birth, causing some community members to question whether Binance really has a detailed review or chooses the fast track to support the BNB Chain ecosystem.
BNB Chain is on the verge of collapse
Since CZ was released from prison last year, he is no longer allowed to participate in Binance's daily operations according to the law. As an influential figure in the industry, his scope of involvement is still quite wide. For example, in the two sectors of investment business and its public chain ecology, Binance Labs has officially changed its name to YZi Labs and transformed into a large family office. Its investment scope has expanded from cryptocurrency to AI and biotechnology. In its official announcement, it stated that CZ will continue to play a key role in investment activities, directly contact entrepreneurs and provide guidance.
In addition, the ecological progress on BNB Chain has also attracted CZ's attention. Recently, Binance Labs invested in its ecological re-staking Kernel and DEX project THENA. The re-staking craze has never been set off again, and the price trend of THE currency shows that the community has not bought it. The price of the currency has fallen from a high of $4.18 to $0.47. Another ecological project CAKE has recently fallen to around $1.6, not far from the historical low of $1.05.
Behind the crisis, BNB Chain launched an AI agent solution this year and introduced the meme launch platform Four.meme to GMGN, trying to catch the wave of memes and AI agents. The embarrassing thing is that it was slow to react and encountered a big market downturn.
BNB Chain performed well in the last cycle, but it performed mediocrely in this cycle, and it can even be said that it was left far behind. Ecosystem projects performed mediocrely, and the meme ecosystem did not improve. Compared with Solana and Base chain, the trend is obviously declining. As of January 30 this year, the number of daily active addresses of the Solana network is 6 times that of BNB Chain. Even the number of daily active addresses of L2 newcomer Base has surpassed BNB Chain. About a year ago, the number of daily active addresses of BNB Chain was twice that of Solana.
The ecosystem is sluggish and the wealth effect is lacking, so CZ, as the face of the industry, can no longer sit still.
On February 7, CZ initiated a vote on “Should BNB Chain try to eliminate or actively reduce the MEV problem?” and said, “I hate any type of front-running, and MEV is like that to me. In a decentralized world, no one can completely prevent it. But there are ways to reduce it.”
Subsequently, CZ responded to and retweeted TST-related questions and expressed his opinions on Twitter many times. The popularity of TST soared rapidly in a short period of time, and some smart addresses that bought in early made huge profits.
Following the meme, CZ also specifically talked about the issue of coin listing, which is of great concern to the community. "As an observer, I think there is something wrong with Binance's coin listing process. The platform first releases an announcement and then goes online 4 hours later. Although the notice period is necessary, during these 4 hours, the token price will be pushed up on DEX, and then someone will sell it on CEX."
In this regard, community members suggested that CEX could take measures such as providing initial liquidity, incentivizing liquidity plans, and connecting with DEX liquidity pools to optimize the listing process. In response to netizens’ suggestions, CZ said, “I think CEX should automatically list (almost) all tokens like DEX, but I am no longer responsible for operating CEX.
summary
If CEX really automatically lists almost all tokens like DEX, the CEX product positioning, the effect of listing, etc. will be questioned. CZ has recently tweeted frequently about BNB Chain and listing, of course, to respond to community concerns, but judging from the performance of some representatives, the results are minimal.
Perhaps the root of the problem is far more than Binance itself, but involves more deep-seated problems in the entire crypto industry: crypto nihilism, one meme after another sucking blood, lack of industry innovation, and selling coins becoming the main business of the project side...
