CZ’s public statement “BNB is a meme coin” sparked heated discussions in the community. What was he thinking behind this?

CurrencyBinance founder CZ in X a few hours ago shared the news that BNB will be listed on Kraken exchange on 4/22, and for the first time called Binance platform token BNB a "meme coin", which sparked heated discussion in the crypto community.

In the conversation, CZ casually said "BNB is a meme coin" with a shrugging emoji, triggering different interpretations in the community. Some users believe this is an affirmation of BNB ecosystem builders, aimed at emphasizing its technical value rather than a pure meme coin (recent meme coin development in the ecosystem is hot, and all trading interactions require payment in BNB).

Some other users see this as his mockery of meme coin culture. Overall, the market reaction was not very strong, but driven by the new Launchpool and TGE activities, BNB price approached $590 before the manuscript deadline, performing best among the top ten tokens in the past 24 hours.

Does CZ Really Want to Treat BNB as a Meme Coin?

Another possibility is that CZ might genuinely want to define BNB as a meme coin. We know that under securities law, if a cryptocurrency is defined as a security rather than a commodity, the legal regulations it must bear will be much more complex. Previously, some issuers proposed a BNB ETF, and if it cannot be defined as a commodity, the threshold for official launch would be much higher.

However, we know that as the core token of BNB Chain, its functions cover Binance trading fee discounts, staking and DeFi applications, far beyond the speculative nature of typical meme coins. Meanwhile, a large amount of BNB reserves are held by CZ and the Binance exchange team, which raises questions about whether it can pass the SEC's securities test.