Author: Zuo Ye
People will spend two years learning to speak, and then a lifetime learning to be silent.
In the crypto world, success and fame are synonymous, as there is no distance between traffic and monetization, because it is all about the asset issuance and recovery industry, which can also be called the redistribution of wealth, and being famous has become a must-have for every practitioner.
VCs are no longer high-end, but are eager to surf Twitter daily to link projects;
CEXs have become emotional massage masters, shuffling information back and forth in X/TG/ WeChat groups to ensure PR crises are under control;
Male and female BDs are wandering between traffic and vagrancy, burning high salaries in the second tier in search of the dream of getting rich overnight.
If you are lucky enough not to fall into these traps, or lucky enough to escape the PR crisis alive, you will get the most traffic, and using the formula, traffic can instantly turn into trading volume. Some say Binance's profit is $50 billion, and some say Bitget's year-end bonus is 50 months' salary.
True or false, the lead is undeniable, but how long can the lead last?
The Dilemma of the Leader - Excessive Self-Importance
There is no need to FUD Solana and doubt that Binance is going to sell. Solana has been following the "single-chain" model from the beginning, which is the fundamental source of its high performance. Jump's trading ability and SBF's direct promotion are just to complement Solana, not to exploit it unilaterally.
The logic for Binance is similar. Binance's operations are not problematic, the problem is that Binance in 2017 cannot survive in 2025. If CZ is forcibly pledged for 4 months, no one can surpass him afterwards, so now CZ can't keep up with the times is not a problem.
Binance's problem is only itself, or it can be called "crushed by its own weight":
The internal interest group and the idle employees, from Trust Wallet being left behind by OKX Web3 Wallet to employees frequently conflicting with users, it is He Yi and CZ who are soothing the market, which is a black humor that is almost anti-Marxist. Normally, it should be the employees supporting the company, the boss exploiting the employees, but now it's more like a mother hen protecting a weasel.
Binance in 2017 was arbitraging globally, taking in the users and traffic of Huobi and OK who fled the ban, which was the right time for Binance to start. The global migration allowed the offshore exchange advantage to be fully realized, which was the right place. And then there was the handling of the contradictions between the founding partners, external investors and the company, which was the right people. It is very clear that the right time is no longer there, the US Department of Justice has become Binance's heaven, the right place is gone, Binance, Labs and BNB Chain are all going their own way, the synergy of the ecosystem cannot be stated, and the right people are also gone, with high-educated employees lacking the simple-minded BDs who just want to make money.
When the TST and CZ's Dog soap operas were played out one after another, and it was only after Four.Meme made hundreds of millions on Pump.Fun that they started to take action, when the AI Agent and Meme disappeared, CZ began to study the combination of AI Agent and BNB Chain.
The hero is in decline, nothing more.
At this point, self-rescue is the only way. BNB will become a true Web3 asset, needing to take on the responsibility of connecting the post-regulatory era of BNB Chain and Binance, empowering BNB can ensure Binance's position in the CEX, Kaito's airdrop to BNB holders is just an appetizer, the key is how to truly make BNB Chain a chain, not just Binance's subsidiary chain. The wallet can no longer be relied upon, CZ needs to leave himself a ticket to enter the future on-chain ecosystem.
In the memory of many people, the impression of BNB Chain is still stuck in the BSC on-chain meme era of the last cycle, now CZ is starting to re-learn the crypto tricks, the opportunity to prove himself as the king of picking up the leftovers or a true entrepreneur has come after his complete withdrawal from Binance.
The Fate of the Chaser - Long More, Wrong More
PI's conquest only validates one thing, the breakout effect of $TRUMP is not as good as Dogecoin shilled by Musk in 2021. I was very optimistic about Trump Coin before, not because I was optimistic about the coin price, but because I was optimistic about the breakout effect.
But unfortunately, Trump's PUMP was too strong, leading to a huge DUMP and too short a time. Dogecoin in 2021 rose slowly, and Musk's choice of hinting rather than openly endorsing also allowed Dogecoin to develop an independent market.
After Trump, the Solana token issuance group chose presidents who all had this problem, the collateral damage of political figures is much more complex than celebrities, why are presidential coins so short-lived in a single cycle and the entire cycle (from Trump to Milei, a month at most), it may be that the backlash of deconstructing political seriousness is too severe.
So OKX chose to surrender to PI, the ripple effect was shocking, Bybit doesn't matter whether they accept or not, even Binance picked up the retro trick of voting for listing, although it may not necessarily be listed, but it verified the correctness of OKX's risky move - let the industry follow its own rhythm, even command the steps of the industry leaders.
Of course, after PI is listed, it will inevitably go down the established path of Ponzi, but the great advantage of the crypto world is that everyone knows this is a Ponzi, which is the biggest difference from traditional finance, traditional finance does not admit that the emperor has no clothes, the crypto world chooses to admit it.
If you don't like it, you can short, this is He Yi's answer, in Bitget's system, if I don't like you, I have to say it out loud, you say the city gate tower, I say the hip bone axis, but still the same, the hierarchy in the crypto world is too small, the quantum entanglement between public opinion and private discourse, the fate of being unable to separate leads to the infinite amplification of crises.
Caption: Performance of various CEXs in listing, image source: Animoca Brands Research
"The dead are like this, day and night without rest" the foreigner explained: Confucius stood by the river, pointing to a floating corpse and said "See that? That's what you'll be like in the future."
For the chasers, you have to keep doing the right thing to gain a little user trust, but on the flip side, one mistake can be a disaster, but the chasers can't not do anything, otherwise the stable pattern naturally benefits the largest share leader, and so an industry training camp with employees lasting 4 months is born, a situation that even Yan Xishan wouldn't survive half a year.
The leader has many problems, but the advantage of scale overwhelms everything, all the mistakes can be covered up by a BNB token airdrop, a simple price rise, and then peace and quiet.
Crypto giants will become more like the internet, the internet will become more like state-owned enterprises, everything is becoming institutionalized, becoming part of the existing order.
Conclusion
Pinduoduo caught up with JD by compressing employee toilet time, becoming the second in China, and Temu is fighting Amazon, the second in two markets is the global first, now the crypto chasers will also learn the strategies of the internet 5/6 years ago, in short, the more aggressive, the more melon-eating CEXs will be the main melody of 2025, they will not be quickly replaced by Hyperliquid and other DEXs, let alone the suicidal moves of Solana-based DEXs like JUP.
Whether Solana will become the third chain after BTC/ETH remains to be seen, and now BNB Chain is also joining the battle.
