30s Summary

Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao criticized the meme coin scene, urging crypto enthusiasts to focus on developing serious blockchain apps. Zhao, who stepped down from Binance in 2023, still supports the company’s trading of meme coins due to public demand, but warned of their instability after the value of two recently listed coins plunged. Despite growing criticism, data reveals meme coins have a combined market value of around $110 billion or 3.44% of the global crypto market.

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Former Binance boss, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, thinks crypto fans need to stop obsessing over meme coins and start building serious blockchain apps instead.

On November 26, CZ voiced his criticism of the meme coin scene, saying it’s getting weirder instead of remaining fun like it was when it first started.

CZ stepped back from his CEO role at Binance in November 2023 after a legal dust-up slapped a $50 million fine on him and stopped him from running or managing the company. Since then, he’s been supporting grassroots growth and education in the Web3 world.

Meme coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have ridden the hype wave since 2021, thanks to Elon Musk and the wider crypto community’s support. But CZ thinks it’s time to move beyond hype.

Even though many of CZ’s followers agreed with him, some people pointed out that Binance, CZ’s old company, brought a lot of meme coins on board, even though they didn’t offer obvious benefits.

Despite CZ’s warning, Binance still trades meme coins based on public demand. But the value of Why and Cheems, two recently listed meme coins, plummeted within a day of being listed.

A number of seasoned investors partly blamed Binance for enabling risky investments.

On the other hand, meme coin performance in the market has been amazing. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and CoinMarketCap reveals that the meme coin system has a combined market value of around $110 billion, which is 3.44% of the $3.19 trillion crypto market.

But it’s not all good news. On November 25, Pump.fun, a platform for creating Solana-based meme coins, faced serious backlash after a user threatened to kill themselves live on the platform.

While Pump.fun acknowledged people’s concerns, they stood by their moderation efforts. However, they eventually took down the live-streaming feature from their platform.