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Binance has barely moved since CZ resigned.
And it’s not like the odds weren’t stacked against it, even to the point where much of the world outside of crypto was downright hostile to it.
Recent years have seen driving bans and other jurisdictional hurdles in parts of the country. Europe, Asia and Africa. This includes a grueling period eight month ordeal in Nigerian prison for Binance financial crime compliance manager Tigran Gambaryan, who was arrested on trumped-up money laundering charges.
Then there is increasing competition in the crypto space. Rival offshore crypto exchanges including Bybit, Bitget, and Gate.io have all expanded their footprints to fill some of the significant void left by FTX.
Nevertheless, Binance remains the number one place in terms of trading volume. CoinGecko points at $9 billion in normalized daily volume on Binance at present. Bybit comes in a distant second with $3 billion, followed by Coinbase with $2.6 billion.
Binance’s ability to serve memecoin traders the way they want appears to be the key to success – at least at this part of the cycle.
In fact, Binance effectively cornered the memecoin game: Kaiko in December calculated that the exchange controlled 44% of memecoin volume on CEXs.
Empire‘s Jason Yanowitz discussed some of these topics with new(ish) CEO Richard Teng in today’s podcast episode:
“I thought you had to stop doing a lot of things (Binance did) to get to this point: listing things early, jumping into new markets quickly,” Yanowitz said.
“But you still list a lot of memecoins. You are still very early for announcements. Got some new Launchpool projects over the past few months – Binance has offered users a lot more trading opportunities. This goes a little counter to what I thought would happen.
A dashboard Tracking New Tokens Listed on Binance in 2024 lists 37 coins, nine of which are memes, including HMSTR, BABYDOGE, TURBO, and DOGS. The platform also recently added perps for AI coins – next generation memecoins – AI16Z, ZEREBRO and GRIFFAIN with leverage up to 75x.
Teng responded by stating that Binance lists fewer coins than many of its competitors, which itself is a function of listing processes that protect the interests of its users.
“If you look at the number of parts we list, it’s around 600. We’re very, very strict in the parts selection process on that front. We have published the rating criteria and we protect the rating team so much that we give them the time and space to carry out their independent due diligence.
Co-host Santiago Santos then asked for an answer on listing fees – one of the last big lucrative aspects of crypto exchanges still opaque to outsiders.
“(Binance’s) distribution is unprecedented – when you think about the overall fee (for Launchpad listings), is it a dollar amount or a notional amount – is it an offering amount symbolic, and if so, I’m curious how it has evolved over time,” Santos said.
Teng declined to comment, saying those details were very specific. Better luck next time, I guess.
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