In this bull market, many high-cap tokens dubbed "VC coins" have been ruthlessly abandoned by the crypto community, who have instead embraced low-cap, narrative-driven meme coins, creating many hundred-fold or even ten-thousand-fold myths.
Due to the shift in community focus, many institutions and exchanges have also turned their attention to meme coins, including the world's largest centralized exchange, Binance.
Binance Listing of ACT, PNUT Drives Meme Coin Frenzy
A week after Trump's election, the crypto bull market sparked by Bitcoin was already underway, but meme coins did not see a widespread rally at the time, until Binance announced a groundbreaking announcement - the listing of ACT and PNUT spot trading pairs.
The author believes that this announcement directly ignited the enthusiasm of the meme market, as ACT's market cap was only $20 million at the time, but after Binance's announcement, its market cap jumped directly to $400 million, a full 20-fold increase.
This also sent a signal to the market that "low-cap tokens can be listed on Binance", leading to a continued frenzy in popular meme coins, as the market expected these hot meme coins to have a good chance of being listed on Binance.
However, in Binance's subsequent listing plans, many meme coins were only listed for futures trading pairs, not spot trading pairs, and the immediate crashes of meme coins like $Cheems and $WHY after Binance's announcement have made the market more skeptical about Binance's selection and operation of meme coin listings.
Furthermore, after the crashes of $Cheems and $WHY, there were also many rumors of Binance insider trading circulating in the community.
Binance CMO: No Meme Coin Guaranteed Binance Listing
Against this backdrop, according to a report by Cointelegraph, Binance's Chief Marketing Officer Rachel Conlan stated in an interview on meme coin-related topics that Binance conducts extensive due diligence on projects seeking listing, and that no token is guaranteed a Binance listing:
Community feedback and trend insights are one of the important factors in decision-making, but simply relying on hype is not enough to qualify for a listing.
Conlan also stated that meme coins have received a lot of negative criticism due to their lack of utility, but some emerging meme coins are starting to incorporate utility features, which is what the crypto market needs:
But we know that some emerging meme coins have already built in utility features, which is exactly what the market needs, because we need use cases that can be actually applied.
Although not explicitly stated, the author believes Conlan is referring to AI meme tokens like ACT and GOAT that have outlines of practical applications.
Necessity of Utility and Community Engagement
On the other hand, Conlan also predicted that the crypto community will see exponential growth in the next 18 to 24 months, meaning exchanges will need to focus more on crypto projects with utility features:
Meme coins may seem casual in the early stages, but ensuring utility is crucial to maintaining community engagement.
Furthermore, Conlan emphasized that the focus should now be more on "the innovations that are brewing during the bear market", and she expects these innovations to bring real-world application scenarios.
