Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher
Nearly three months later, the impact of the 1011 incident continues to ferment, even bringing an unprecedented reputation crisis to Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao.
In recent days, on the crypto-related timelines of social platform X, almost all are filled with a large amount of criticism and attacks against Changpeng Zhao, with many KOLs calling him a "scammer," and he is widely considered to have suffered a "collapse of public image" and "backlash from influence."
The incident originated from remarks made by "Cathie Wood" in a program, where she pointed out that the recent high-level pullback of Bitcoin was affected by the $28 billion deleveraging event triggered by a Binance software malfunction on October 10. She analyzed that the current market selling pressure has basically ended, and as institutional investors focus on the turning point of the "four-year cycle," it is expected that Bitcoin will consolidate at the bottom in the range of $80,000 to $90,000 before ending the downward trend and resuming its upward trend.
In the previous 1011 incident, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies plummeted, with the total market capitalization of the global crypto market evaporating more than $500 billion, and leveraged positions liquidated exceeding $19 billion, making it the largest leveraged liquidation event in the history of the crypto industry. From a large number of ordinary users to many well-known market makers and VCs, all suffered heavy losses in the incident. One of the mainstream views is that the occurrence of the incident is closely related to the abnormal liquidation mechanism of Binance. After the incident, Binance also modified the K-line trends of some coins with abnormal changes.
Since Cathie Wood has deep influence in both traditional finance and the crypto field, and is also an early investor in Coinbase and Bitcoin, her remarks brought the painful situation of the 1011 incident back into the sight of a large number of crypto users, which once again stung the emotions of investors in the current continuously sluggish crypto market.
Among the early speakers, Leonidas, co-founder of Zap/Ord.io, was one of the most influential figures. He fiercely said on Twitter that Changpeng Zhao is not only the biggest cryptocurrency scammer in history but also the biggest scammer in the history of human civilization. The world has never seen fraud, manipulation, and corruption on the scale of Binance now. Send this man back to jail!
Crypto trader Anglio also tweeted that CZ is the culprit behind the 10/10 liquidation case. Just because he wanted to kill HYPE, he ended up killing his own space. CZ is a complete criminal. The comments section also had a large number of tweets like "You scam others, destroy people's lives, destroy the market, and still pretend to be a good guy."
The focus of these remarks is on the 1011 liquidation incident, believing that Binance bears the main responsibility in this incident but has never publicly released an investigation report or admitted the problem. At the same time, almost all of the large number of new coins listed by Binance last year have fallen sharply, causing heavy losses to investors. Therefore, Changpeng Zhao, as the largest shareholder of Binance, has become their target.
Perhaps due to Binance's long-term accumulation in KOL relationship maintenance and the information cocoon created by X's recommendation logic, such voices were hardly spread in the Chinese X circle in the early days. But starting from the 28th, the huge negative energy accumulated in the English-speaking discussion inevitably spread to the Chinese X circle, and many well-known bloggers also began to sharply criticize Binance.
Well-known crypto trader Chuanmu tweeted, When will you come out to apologize and compensate all exchange users for October 11th? This Binance couple has been diverting attention and remaining silent about this day to evade responsibility. They harvested tens of billions of dollars in assets from users and market makers in one day, turning the entire industry into an assembly line of the Dubai scam park!
OKX founder Star Xu also tweeted on the 28th that the incident has caused real and lasting damage to the industry. Leading companies in the industry should focus on strengthening core infrastructure construction, building trust with global users and regulators, and protecting the company's long-term interests.
However, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and He Yi hold a rebuttal attitude towards all external criticism. Changpeng Zhao first linked many negative critical tweets to organized attacks, pointing out that some previously unfamiliar accounts posted highly similar content in a short period of time, showing obvious characteristics of copying and amplification. The overall behavior is closer to systematic operation rather than natural discussion.
Later, Changpeng Zhao tweeted again in response to the质疑 of low listing quality. He pointed out that in any industry, most companies/projects will fail. A few successful cases will grow exponentially. No one can predict the future development of a project. Exchanges should try to give hard-working projects a chance. Not every project listed on the exchange has to be bought by you.
He Yi further linked these criticisms to the changes of the times and conflicts of interest. "When promoting changes in the world, it is often accompanied by a lot of discussion,质疑, and different voices. This is not unique to a certain industry, but a process in history that all structural changes have repeatedly appeared." He Yi said, "The discussions surrounding the crypto industry and Binance have complex sources, including emotional fluctuations brought by market cycles, as well as differences in business competition, models, and positions."
Some KOLs are also附和 the views of He Yi and Changpeng Zhao. For example, Crypto Orange believes that this matter may be a stage in the process of competition and division between Eastern and Western crypto. Cathie Wood has always been the mouthpiece of Western capital. Her remarks are often bolder, more direct, and exaggerated. During the Bitcoin surge, it was also Cathie Wood who publicly shouted for a million dollars, fueling the trend. She is like a signal gun. This time firing at Binance may also be as a mouthpiece for some top Western capital.
But in today's舆论 environment, completely shirking one's own responsibility and attributing the problem entirely to troll attacks and business competition has become a behavior that greatly reduces user favor. This will not only not stop the related controversies but will only further amplify the negative emotions of investors. The relevant discussions on platform X are still further扩散.
In a持续 sluggish market, investors are always inclined to find an outlet for their negative emotions. For a long time, Changpeng Zhao and others, as the industry's largest beneficiaries, have not shouldered their responsibilities well. They have一味 called on everyone to Hodl on Twitter and have been quite controversial in areas such as listing review and industry ecosystem construction. Therefore, under the fuse, they quickly became the target of public opinion attacks. However, demonizing Changpeng Zhao alone as the "industry's biggest scammer," ignoring the market cycle, users' own responsibilities, and the platform's scale effect, does not seem fair either.
In the final analysis, in this track that is still in the stage of野蛮 growth, in this highly volatile, strong-cycle investment field, there is no pure "savior," and there is no eternal "demon."
