Binance listing fee drama goes nuclear
Binance’s help desk has deleted what it called an “excessive” response to a tweet from Limitless Labs CEO CJ Hetherington after he claimed that it attempted to charge him 8% of his Limitless supply, along with $2.45 million in extra payments, to list the token on the exchange.
Hetherington, who runs Limitless on Coinbase’s Base, also suggested that Binance, and its favorite founders and affiliates, were dumping on users.
In its response, Binance’s help desk fired back, calling Hetherington’s allegations “false and defamatory,” and claiming “Binance does not charge listing fees.”
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It also called his allegations of dumping “untrue and unsubstantiated,” and described his post as the “illegal and unauthorised disclosure of confidential communications with Binance.”
Binance also said it reserved the right to take legal action against the alleged false and defamatory claims.
Binance addresses deleted post
Since its original response, Binance has posted again to claim that it doesn’t make any money through the listing process, and that “100%” of project token allocations go to users through various marketing campaigns, such as trading events and “Alpha Airdrops.”
The security deposit it demanded from Hetherington was also described as “a safeguard against short term exploitation” that “ensures the project team stays committed post listing.”
It noted that these deposits are returned after a project completes its commitments.
The exchange also addressed the deleted post, saying, “While we stand by our position, the way we communicated was excessive and we sincerely apologize to our users, partners, and the wider industry.”
Hetherington spurred on complaints
Hetherington was backed up by The Block co-founder Mike Dudas who claimed that he’d seen “listing proposals of the exact same nature.”
O Media CEO Jeffy Yu also chipped in , claiming that Binance asked for $1 million to list his token. He chose to list on multiple exchanges, including Kraken, to which which he claims to have paid between “$100-200k on top of token supply.”
He also said that ByBit “took fat stack of tokens plus $250k.”
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Binance disputed Yu’s allegations, claiming that he was probably speaking to a scammer, not Binance staff. It said, “We wanted to confirm that there has been no communication in question regarding your coin listing.”
Prominent crypto trader James Wynn sided with Binance, describing the criticism as Coinbase leading a “coordinated FUD attack to try and damage CZ’s/Binance/BNB reputation.”
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Rival exchanges, such as Hyperliquid, have taken the opportunity to promote their own firms, claiming to have “no listing fee, no listing department, and no gatekeepers.”
After last weekend’s crypto crash, Hyperliquid co-founder, Jeffrey Yan, argued with former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao about the exchanges’ respective abilities to respond to such an event.
Zhao wades into Binance listing drama
Zhao, who is currently banned from working at Binance following a US plea deal, also expressed his thoughts on exchanges’ listing processes earlier today.
He opened by stating any projects complaining about listing fees should simply not pay them. He also suggested that competitive exchanges complaining about listing fees should set theirs to zero.
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Crypto “bag holders” were told to complain to their project instead, and he stressed that PancakeSwap doesn’t have listing fees.
“In a decentralized world, businesses are free to have their own business models. No one is forcing you to adopt a certain model,” Zhao said, adding, “If your project is strong, exchanges will race to list your coin.”
Hetherington responded by saying, “Remember guys: don’t make it real. Ignore is the best rejection.”
He has repeatedly promoted Limitless in between taking shots at Binance and appears to have misleadingly implied that Zhao blocked him.
Others complained that, based on Zhao’s listing logic, Hyperliquid’s token should already be listed. Others pointed out that this would likely never happen since Hyperliquid is a competitor.
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