Author: Todd Source: X, @0x_Todd
I'm not afraid to offend anyone - the "Binance listing dilemma" is an inevitable outcome, and the redemption plan is extremely cruel.
I. Traditional Listing vs Crypto Listing
The two most important purposes of a traditional company's IPO:
1. Refinancing and expanding production;
2. Endorsement;
Both are to help the company gain a competitive business advantage and create more profits for itself & its shareholders.
Additionally, there are:
3. Founders and investors exiting;
4. Incentivizing employees;
The former is a true welfare and encourages more business to emerge in society; the latter gains business advantages by increasing employee loyalty.
Importance: 1>2>3>4
This is why people have always talked about "capital self-replicating", because all goals ultimately boil down to: earning more money through business advantages.
In fact, many companies don't even want to go public, like ByteDance, like Huawei, because they are already making enough money and no longer need to expand their business advantages through refinancing.
Everyone in our industry is aware of the cruel facts, 99% of Crypto projects don't make any money at all.
The purpose of expanding business advantages simply * does not exist * from the very beginning. Reinvesting is meaningless, the more you invest, the greater the loss.
So only purposes 3 and 4 remain, i.e. the exit of founders, investors and employees.
II. Welfare and Obligations
Traditional IPOs have stringent requirements and obligations:
Pre-IPO: There must be a powerful sponsor to do the IPO, this step at least proves that the founders and business model are not too problematic, letting the founders know that this opportunity is expensive and not to mess around; the sponsor also cherishes its feathers (license) extremely and won't use excessive off-the-books tricks.
However, the problem with Crypto protocols is that they enjoy the welfare of traditional IPOs: investor exit / employee incentives...
But they don't bear any of the traditional IPO obligations:
Pre-Listing, the project team has no sponsor, and many founders don't even realize that Listing is a rigorous matter. On the contrary, everyone is an anonymous project, and they don't even consider future reproduction at all.
So - bribery / fraud / wash trading / scamming, all the tricks, of course, are "to be used to the fullest", because there will be no punishment!
III. No Punishment
The important thing is said three times:
No punishment;
No punishment;
No punishment;
The project team will not be punished, the exchange employees will not be punished, and the exchange itself will not be punished either.
3.1 Project Team
The harshest punishment for the project team is to be blacklisted by the exchange.
But what does being blacklisted matter?
Using a classic fantasy question, if you had a red button in front of you:
A. 50% chance of getting 10 million;
B. 50% chance of never being able to press that button again;
Would you press it? You'd fucking press it 100 times - is that even a punishment?
3.2 Exchange Employees
You can say that Binance, Coinbase have punishments for bribed employees - criticism, dismissal, and even theoretically pursuing legal liability.
But the evidence is too difficult to obtain. Crypto is the most untraceable asset in the world, this is an asset even used by Russia, Iran and North Korea. You know, our industry's privacy infrastructure is the world's best:
I use Signal or TG private chat for my conversations;
I trade using some cross-chain bridges, even mixers;
I withdraw using some non-KYC third-tier exchanges.
Even if Interpol investigates in person, they may not be able to crack it. What makes your exchange's internal audit department dare to claim to solve corruption?
And the implementation of corruption is also extremely covert:
Just a few kind words in the exchange, a few pointers at the project team meeting.
Even if you just choose to remain silent when the leader is in an information cocoon, instead of bursting the bubble, the entire bribery process is complete.
So, as Jocy said, the project team specifically bribes the exchange boss's KOLs. Your exchange's internal Jinyiwei, even if Chen Lifeng and Mao Renfeng were to be resurrected, could never solve it, it's an unsolvable conspiracy.
3.3 The Exchange Itself
Let's imagine the exchange as an entity.
Listing a coin, it first drops 90%, and a year later it drops another 90%, compared to listing a 10x coin, the only difference is that the former makes less money and the latter makes more money.
Yes, you've realized, the exchange makes money by listing shit coins, it won't even lose money.
And the reputational punishment cannot be quantified at all, the exchange won't even set up a department to specifically track changes in reputation, offending the boss and offending colleagues, and there's no oil money, no one will do it.
So what's the punishment? Listing a shit coin, the punishment is "making a little less money"?
Is this punishment?
IV. Financial Disclosure
After a traditional company goes public, it regularly discloses financial statements, and there are countless short-selling institutions and retail investors who scrutinize the financial statements.
Take an example we all know, due to PwC taking on the Evergrande account, it is still being cursed to this day, and more importantly, PwC was fined a huge 320 million yuan by the regulator.
But for Crypto projects after listing, not only is there no financial disclosure, but the destination of the funds in the on-chain treasury is also very difficult to determine.
The project team can arbitrarily dispose of the money obtained from selling, they can buy mansions, hold yacht parties, pursue romance, or even research immortality, the only thing certain is that they will not reinvest to expand reproduction.
This is the key problem - after Listing, selling/cashing out is not a problem in itself, but the problem is that they don't reinvest in production after cashing out, this is a vicious cycle of blood loss.
V. Solution
The disease is severe, the problem is deep, the only solution is: stop listing, stop listing, stop listing.
Until Crypto projects have completely solved the "no revenue at all" problem, listing is meaningless:
Listing one, it directly drops 90%, which is just quickly cutting all users;
Listing one, first pulling 10x, then trapping at the top, is just helping the smart users cut the dumb users.
It's just fifty steps laughing at a hundred steps, the only difference is that the latter looks better on the surface, it's called "giving them a chance".
Warning: If the exchange continues to use the current listing strategy, it will be gradually eroded and even replaced by DEXs, it's just a matter of time.
I wouldn't be surprised if one day a Telegram Bot gets 5-10% of BN CB and UB's share.
-------- Dividing Line --------
Now entering the fantasy time: The fundamental solution: set up two sites, a main site + a community site.
【Main Site】 Gradually Shrinking
Immediately stop listing, if more aggressive, also gradually eliminate and delist the previous tokens.
【Community Site】 New Establishment
The new community site adopts the DEX model, i.e. registration system, where every project can be listed fairly.
Ask yourself, how many times has Uniswap or Raydium been cursed for listing thousands of tokens a day? When has Hayden Adams ever been bribed? Fucking Alpha Ray doesn't even have a real name, no one needs to create an information cocoon for him.
It may be painful, but the benefits are:
In the future, getting listed on Binance, Coinbase will no longer be the exit endpoint for the project team; but the starting point to strive and aspire to create a kick-ass application (otherwise they won't make money).
Value discovery is completely left to the community, not the listing team or investment department. The registration system can perfectly solve the problem of "why is BN always the last one".
If there are Crypto stars of the future, they will definitely not miss out.
And the shit coins in there will never be able to deceive more people through unfair means.
Looking forward to that day, this decision is great and cruel.
But once successful, it can even reverse the entire industry's atmosphere, stop the "To Binance" and "To Coinbase" trend, and give birth to a true killer app like ChatGPT.
Never go against human nature;
Never go against business rules.
