Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has branded a flurry of online criticism directed towards himself and Binance a “coordinated attack.”
The criticism came in response recent to a post he made in which he appeared to encourage users to simply “buy and hold.”
“Lots of accounts I don’t recognize suddenly tweet roughly copy and paste on the same topic,” Zhao said.
He previously described the criticism as “twisted FUD” and clarified that he doesn’t mean traders should buy and hold every single token, as that would lead to a terribly performing portfolio.
Read more: How Binance’s $USDe ‘depeg’ cost the exchange millions
World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Witkoff also chimed in to say, “Funny how the loudest ‘concerns’ about [Binance], [Zhao], and [Yi Hi] always seem to arrive in perfect formation. Coordinated outrage is usually the tell.”
Zhao called a “terrorist of crypto”
Crypto Twitter was awash this week with criticism of Zhao and Binance.
Furious users vented on everything from the crypto crash of last October to Zhao’s tweets, with others simply accusing him of being a scammer and fraud.
Indeed, one article boldly claimed that both Zhao and Binance are “terrorists” of crypto, and that the crypto crash last October was “manufactured” by the exchange to “cannibalize” its users.
The article appears to be largely generated by ChatGPT, with no sources linked. It claims that Binance is a scam thanks to an alleged 8% token supply “tax,” that it sabotaged Hyperliquid by listing the token “JELLY,” and blames the exchange for the crash of FTX.
Some posts didn’t offer much substance beyond outright calling him a “scammer” and claiming that Binance is carrying out “fraud, manipulation, and corruption” on a scale the world hasn’t seen.
Other random accounts called to “boycott Binance” and dubbed Zhao crypto’s “biggest scammer.” One crypto account pointed to analytics that showed Binance Futures tokens down on average 80%, which was also used as criticism against the exchange.
Read more: CHART: Returns of memecoins attributed to CZ since leaving prison
Binance crypto crash noted by ARK CEO Cathie Wood
Ark CEO Cathie Wood appeared on Fox News this week to discuss an “acceleration” across various tech industries and noted that the crypto industry has undergone “reverberations” thanks to “10/10.”
She notes that it was caused by a software glitch on Binance. The cause of the crash involved the de-pegging of Ethena’s “synthetic dollar” $USDe on Binance, with Binance claiming that this was due to market volatility at the time.
Wood’s interview was reposted by OKX CEO Star Xu, who threw shade at Binance, saying, “People have underestimated the impact of 10/10. The incident caused real and lasting damage to the industry.”
He added that an “industry-leading company” should focus on strengthening infrastructure, building trust with users and regulators, and protecting users’ long-term interests.
Read more: Binance listing fee drama goes nuclear
“Instead, some chose to pursue short-term gains — repeatedly launching Ponzi-like schemes, amplifying a handful of “get-rich-quick” narratives, and directly or indirectly manipulating the prices of low-quality tokens, drawing millions of users into assets closely tied to them,” Star added.
While Zhao has been trying to counter the sudden negative narrative circulating on X, Yi Hi, the co-CEO of Binance, used the recent criticism to help promote a job advertisement for Binance.
