Author: X@0xTodd
I'm not afraid to offend anyone - the "Binance listing dilemma" is an inevitable outcome, and the redemption plan is extremely cruel.
I. Traditional IPO 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' exit;
4. Incentivizing employees;
The former is a true welfare and encourages more business creation 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 already make enough money and no longer need to expand their business advantages through refinancing.
Everyone in our industry is aware of the cruel facts, that 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 objectives 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's obligations:
Pre-Listing, project teams have no sponsors, 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 tactics are of course "to be used to the fullest", because there will be no punishment!
III. No Punishment
The important thing needs to be said three times:
No punishment;
No punishment;
No punishment;
Project teams will not be punished, exchange employees will not be punished, and the exchanges themselves will not be punished either.
3.1 Project Teams
The harshest punishment for project teams 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 real punishment?
3.2 Exchange Employees
You could say that Binance, Coinbase punish employees who take bribes - 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, it's an asset even used by Russia, Iran and North Korea. You know, our industry's privacy infrastructure is the best in the world:
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 whole process of bribery is complete.
So, as Jocy said, project teams specifically bribe the exchange bosses' attention-grabbing KOLs. Your exchange's internal Jinyiwei, even if Chen Lifeng and Mao Renfen were to resurrect, could never solve this, it's an unsolvable conspiracy.
3.3 The Exchange Itself
Let's imagine the exchange as an entity.
Listing a coin that first drops 90%, and then drops another 90% a year later, is no different from listing a 10x coin in terms of making money, it's just that the former makes a little less money and the latter makes more.
Yes, you've realized it, the exchange makes money by listing shit coins, it won't even lose money.
And the reputational punishment can't 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 that 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 reports.
Take an example we all know, PwC took on the Evergrande account, and to this day it is still being cursed, 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, it's even hard to know where the funds in the on-chain treasury are going.
Project teams can arbitrarily dispose of the money they get from selling, they can buy mansions, host yacht parties, fall in love, even research immortality, the only thing certain is that they won't 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 bleeding cycle.
V. Solution
The disease is severe, the solution is: stop listing, stop listing, stop listing.
Until Crypto projects have completely solved the problem of "no revenue at all", listing is meaningless:
Listing one, it drops 90% directly, which is just quickly cutting all users;
Listing one, first pull 10x, then trap at the top, is just helping smart users cut dumb users.
It's just fifty steps laughing at a hundred steps, the only difference is that the latter looks better on the face, it's called "giving a chance".
Warning: If the exchange continues to use the current listing strategy, it will be gradually eroded and even replaced by DEX, it's just a matter of time.
I wouldn't even be surprised if one day a Telegram Bot gets 5-10% of BN CB and UB's share.
--------Dividing Line--------
Now let's enter the fantasy time: The fundamental solution: set up two sites, a main site + a community site.
[Main Site] Gradually shrink
Immediately stop listing, if more aggressive, also gradually eliminate and delist the previous tokens.
[Community Site] New Setup
The new community site adopts the DEX model, i.e. registration system, where every project can list fairly.
Ask yourself, when has Uniswap or Raydium been cursed for listing thousands of tokens a day? When has Hayden Adams been bribed? Fuck, Alpha Ray doesn't even use his 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 project teams; but the starting point for striving to create a kick-ass application (otherwise they can't make money).
Value discovery is entirely 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 but 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 real killer app like ChatGPT.
Never go against human nature;
Never go against the rules of business.
'short' must be translated into 'short'. 'shit coin' must be translated into 'shit coin'. 'Uniswap' must be translated into 'Uniswap'. 'Amp' must be translated into 'Amp'. 'Raydium' must be translated into 'Raydium'. 'ADA' must be translated into 'ADA'. 'UNI' must be translated into 'UNI'. 'HT' must be translated into 'HT'. 'GT' must be translated into 'GT'. 'AR' must be translated into 'AR'. 'AMP' must be translated into 'AMP'.
