On the afternoon of February 18, the narrative of "CZ's Dog" that had been somewhat dormant suddenly became active. Around 6 pm, a new $BROCCOLI token was issued, which quickly surged in a short period of time, reaching a market cap of 50M in an hour and a half, and is currently stabilizing at around 10M. The explosive popularity of this token is not only a literary renaissance, but is also closely related to the recent $LIBRA and "charitable relief" events.
In less than a day, Binance Alpha successively listed Broccoli (f2b), Broccoli (714), and Broccoli (f3b). The token with the 714 suffix first halved in market value from around $70M to a low of $30M, and then rebounded quickly, with a current market value of $56.56M. The trends of the f2b and f3b tokens are similar to that of 714, first plummeting and then rebounding back to their original market value levels.
Event Background: CZ's "Night of Broccoli" and the Meme Coin Frenzy
After CZ announced on February 13 that his pet dog's name was "Broccoli", dozens of Meme coin projects with the same name quickly emerged on the BNB Chain, with their market value once exceeding $400 million. This naming not only sounds similar to "Blockchain", but also reflects the community's frenetic pursuit of CZ's personal influence, forming the speculative phenomenon of the "Night of Broccoli". However, behind this frenzy, there are hidden whales manipulating, community divisions, and a crisis of trust.
Charitable Activities and CZ's Entry: From the Argentine President's Coin Incident to the "Love Heart Airdrop"
The origin of the matter can be traced back to the Argentine President Milei's coin incident, where a large number of crypto investors suffered huge losses. A university student KOL then spontaneously initiated a $50,000 charitable dinner assistance plan on the BNB Chain, compensating all victims (with priority for university students). Subsequently, CZ expressed his support for this project, transferring 150 BNB (about $100,000) to the publicly disclosed charitable address of the KOL, and co-launched the "Exclusive $LIBRA Loser BNBChain Stablecoin Love Heart Airdrop". However, this act of charity unexpectedly became the "fuse" for whale manipulation - the donation address published by CZ was seen by speculators as an "official endorsement signal", triggering a new round of Meme coin speculation.
After CZ's donation address was made public, according to Ai Yí's monitoring, an investor who made $460,000 in profit on BROCCOLI (0x6d5...714) created a new token BROCCOLI (0xa14...aab) and transferred 150 BNB and this token to CZ's donation address. The specific operations include: creating a new token 13 minutes after CZ announced the donation address, and transferring 80% of the token supply (about 797 million) to CZ's address 2 minutes later, while also clearing out the remaining tokens with the 714 suffix, and transferring the 150 BNB in profits back to CZ's address. The actual market value of this new token is about $7 million, which is 20% of the displayed market value. Currently, this investor, as the developer address, holds 10.62 million tokens, making them the largest holder of the token.
After the new token with the aab suffix betrayed the old 714 token, the whales in the 714 community also began to retaliate. At 19:50 (UTC+8) that evening, they transferred 10 million 714 tokens to CZ's address, and the 714 token's market value briefly surged from $96M to $126M, but later fell back, currently stabilizing around $70M. This action was both a protest by the community against the new token, and also exposed the essence of the Meme coin ecosystem's "market value management" relying on whale games.
On the morning of the 19th, CZ tweeted that the BNB received by the donation address was more than he had donated, and there were also more other tokens, and he would not keep a penny, most likely donating to those who lost money on TST or some Broccolis. He emphasized that "this is not an endorsement of any token, do not over-interpret this."
After Binance Alpha listed Broccoli (f2b), Broccoli (714) and Broccoli (f3b) on the afternoon of the 19th, the market value of the token with the aab suffix fell from $12M to around $5M, and the 3 selected tokens did not see a significant increase, but rather first plummeted and then rebounded back to their original market value levels. It seems that even with official recognition, the "orthodox" side did not see a big surge, and the "grassroots" side did not go to zero either. Perhaps after a series of intense "incubation" and whale infighting, the faith in the narrative has been largely depleted.
Although CZ has repeatedly emphasized that he has "not issued any Meme coins", and after the "Broccoli War" CZ wrote that in the process of driving traffic to the BNB Chain, due to a lack of understanding of the Meme issuance process and community operations, it has brought negative impacts to many retail investors, for which he expressed deep apologies and promised to improve the performance of the BNB Chain and formulate Meme coin incentive policies. However, his social media dynamics and the public disclosure of the donation address have objectively provided speculative materials for investors. The fact that there are over a hundred "BROCCOLI" tokens on the BNB Chain, and Binance's Web3 wallet even listed the top four market cap projects under the "CZ's Dog" column on the first day (which has now been closed), also highlights the platform's tacit approval of traffic dividends.
In addition, in this incident, whales have harvested retail investors through information asymmetry, liquidity manipulation and community sentiment, and the so-called "decentralized community consensus" has become a capital game, also revealing the "incubation ground" nature of Meme coins.
The "Broccoli War" is not only a microcosm of Meme coin speculation, but also reveals the fragility of the crypto market in its frenzy - when charity becomes a speculative hotspot, and community consensus becomes the chips of whales, the industry urgently needs to build a healthier ecological foundation from the perspectives of technology, governance and regulation. "When you try to make money quickly, you often lose. When you donate money, you get more in return." This is CZ's reflection in his response to the donation event. CZ's remarks and BNB Chain's upgrade promises may be a starting point, but real change still needs time to be validated.
