Former Binance CEO Qiao Changpeng labeled the online barrage of criticism directed at him and Binance as a “coordinated attack.”
The criticism comes in recent response to a post he made that seemed to encourage users to simply “buy and hold.”
“Many accounts I didn’t recognize were suddenly tweeting roughly copy-pasted tweets about the same topic,” Zhao said.
He previously described this criticism as “twisted FUD” and clarified that it does not mean traders should buy and hold all tokens, which could cause their portfolios to perform very poorly.
Read more: How Binance works $USDe Replacing “Depeg” cost millions of dollars
World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Witkoff agreed, saying, “It’s funny how the most vocal ‘concerns’ about (Binance), (Zhao), and (Yi Hai) always come out in perfect form. Organized outrage is usually the story.”
Calls Mr. Zhao a “cryptocurrency terrorist”
This week, crypto Twitter was flooded with criticism of Zhao and Binance.
Furious users vented everything from last October’s cryptocurrency crash to Zhao’s tweets, while others simply accused him of being a fraud and a scammer.
In fact, one article boldly claimed that both Zhao and Binance are crypto “terrorists” and that last October’s crypto crash was “manufactured” by the exchanges to “cannibalize” their users.
This article appears to be primarily generated by ChatGPT, but the source is not linked. Binance claims to be a fraud due to an alleged 8% token supply “tax”, sabotaged Hyperliquid by listing the token “JELLY”, and blamed the exchange for the FTX crash.
Some posts didn’t offer much more than outright calling him a “scammer” and claiming that Binance practices “fraud, manipulation, and corruption.” on a scale the world has never seen before.
Other random accounts called for people to “boycott Binance” and called Zhao the “biggest scammer” of the cryptocurrency. One crypto account pointed to analysis showing that Binance futures tokens are down an average of 80%, which was also used as a criticism of the exchange.
Read more: Graph: Return of meme coins attributed to CZ after release from prison
Binance’s crypto crash pointed out by ARK CEO Cathie Wood
Ark CEO Cathie Wood appeared on Fox News this week to discuss the “acceleration” across various technology industries, noting that the crypto industry is experiencing a “reverberation” thanks to “10/10.”
She points out that it was caused by a bug in Binance’s software. The cause of the crash was related to the depegging of Ethena’s “synthetic dollar” $USDe Binance claimed this was due to market volatility at the time.
Wood’s interview was reposted by OKX CEO Star Xu, who threw shade at Binance and said, “People are underestimating the impact of 10.10. This incident caused real and lasting damage to the industry.”
He added that “industry-leading companies” should focus on strengthening infrastructure, building trust with users and regulators, and protecting users’ long-term interests.
Read more: Binance’s listing fee drama comes to a head
“Some have instead chosen to pursue short-term profits, repeatedly launching Ponzi-like schemes, amplifying the ‘get-rich-quick’ narratives of a few, and directly or indirectly manipulating the prices of low-quality tokens to lure millions of users into assets closely tied to them,” Starr added.
While Zhao has tried to counter the sudden negative rhetoric that has spread about X, Binance co-CEO Yi Hai has used the recent criticism to promote Binance’s job ad.
