Social media sparks listing war between Binance and Coinbase

Amid passive and aggressive social media exchanges, Coinbase and Binance leaders seized the opportunity to criticize each other’s differing approaches to token listing standards.

The controversy involved Coinbase’s Jesse Pollak, who criticized Binance’s high listing fees, and Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, who fired back by questioning Coinbase’s failure to list BNB. Ironically, Coinbase announced the listing of BNB today.

Conflict between listing fees and the ecosystem

Coinbase’s Jesse Pollak and Binance’s Changpeng Zhao (CZ) publicly clashed on social media today, exchanging indirect jabs over their respective exchanges’ token listing standards.

It all started when the developers at Base turned to Twitter and explained why they thought Coinbase’s Layer 2 network was a better ecosystem to build on than Binance’s BNB chain.

Users argued that Binance’s listing proposal would impose a large and enormous financial burden on new projects, with a spot listing requiring a significant portion of the total token supply and millions of dollars in deposits.

He contrasted this with Base, arguing that Base only asks developers to create “something meaningful.”

Pollack tweeted a quote from a user, arguing that there should be no fees for listing a project on a centralized exchange (CEX).

Another user criticized Pollack’s social media post, claiming that Base is hypocritical because it does not list BNB on an exchange.

At that point, CZ joined the conversation by responding with an emoji hinting at his amusement at the criticism. Another user flipped the script and asked the Binance co-founder why BNB Chain is not listing any tokens specific to the Base network.

CZ defended Binance’s general listing approach, claiming that it lists “all the top coins with a market cap of over $100 billion,” and chided Coinbase for not listing BNB, which has a market cap of over $162 billion.

However, in a surprising turn of events, Coinbase announced today that it has listed BNB on its exchange.

Integrity controversy over token list

Recent social media discussions have resurfaced long-standing tensions between the two largest CEXs regarding token listing standards and competitive strategies.

The dispute followed a weekend market crash that saw Binance freeze withdrawals and quickly sparked a public backlash over solvency and customer money management.

This event prompted users to attack Binance’s revenue and listing model as a whole. Since then, critics have accused Binance of setting low listing standards, especially by adding low-cap tokens and smaller meme coins.

More serious allegations against CEX have also surfaced, with some accusing Binance of lacking integrity and accepting bribes from projects that list its tokens. However, there is currently a lack of direct evidence to prove this.

Some have accused Binance of selectively listing tokens to gain a competitive advantage. The strategy of including high-value coins and small-sized tokens while excluding other popular projects suggests a deliberate restriction of certain competitors.

A debate with no clear winner

Binance has long been accused of intentionally not listing HyperLiquid’s HYPE token despite its strong growth and listings on other major exchanges.

Some speculate that HYPE’s reluctance to list on BNB is intentional, as HyperLiquid is a direct and successful competitor of Binance Futures in the derivatives trading market.

That being said, no one is pretty. Coinbase also failed to list HYPE. Today, BNB was finally listed as a trading target, but CEX also has a history of carefully selecting the tokens to be listed.

At the same time, despite Pollack’s claims that listing is free, Coinbase has faced strong public criticism that this is not true. At one point, celebrities like TRON’s Justin Sun claimed that the exchange demanded fees totaling $330 million to list the token.

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