CZ
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| handle | @cz_binance |
|---|---|
| role | Binance founder |
| known for | the BNB Chain trench era, Broccoli, MarsCoin lore, the 2025 pardon |
CZ is Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, whose dog Broccoli, stray tweets, and even his statue spawned entire meme coin frenzies on BNB Chain, and who was pardoned by Trump in October 2025.
Changpeng Zhao, universally known as CZ, is the founder of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, which he led until pleading guilty in November 2023 to a US charge over inadequate money laundering controls, serving four months in 2024. His meme coin footprint is a study in involuntary influence: without ever issuing a token, CZ became the primary price oracle of the BNB Chain trenches.
The BNB Chain trench era
After his release, CZ reemerged as BNB Chain's informal patron during the chain's 2025 push to compete with Solana for meme coin flow, a roadmap that explicitly emphasized memecoins. His every post became launch material. Crypto Briefing reported his warning that anyone aping into coins created from his random tweets was "almost guaranteed to lose money," a disclaimer the market treated as a buy signal.
Broccoli
In February 2025 CZ revealed that his dog, a Belgian Malinois acquired in Dubai, was named Broccoli, while stating flatly that he was not issuing a coin. Bitcoinist reported that within 12 hours of him posting photos, Broccoli tokens on BNB Chain had a combined capitalization above 200 million dollars, with rival Broccolis fighting for the canonical ticker. The episode became the defining example of a coin meta built entirely on a name drop, with the named party abstaining.
MarsCoin and the statue
The lore extended to accidents. CZ suggested the name MarsCoin in a tweet, and Bitcoin.com reported that when he later burned spam tokens during routine wallet cleanup, speculators read the burns as intent and pumped an unofficial MarsCoin clone from around 40,000 dollars to 30 million before it collapsed. In October 2025 a token tied to a statue of CZ surged around 27,000 percent and then crashed 99 percent after he disowned it with "don't buy the meme," per CoinDesk, having done 1.2 billion dollars of volume.
The 4 meme
The most durable CZ meme coin needs a decoder ring. After the BNB Chain X account was compromised, the attacker launched a coin called "4" and rugged it; traders then revived the token because "4" references item four of CZ's 2023 list of do's and don'ts, "Ignore FUD, fake news, attacks, etc.", which CZ himself habitually posts as a one character reply. The resurrected token's market cap passed 200 million dollars, and Cointelegraph documented a trader turning about 3,000 dollars into roughly 2 million after CZ mentioned it.
Giggle Academy and the retired wallet
CZ's charity became its own meme coin surface. In September 2025 a community memecoin called GIGGLE launched with a 5 percent trade tax automatically converted to BNB and donated to CZ's Giggle Academy nonprofit, generating on the order of a million dollars in donations from a small cap token. Giggle Academy clarified that it has no token, never launched one, and simply sells donated tokens to fund operations, and CCN documented community calls for donation transparency.
On August 16, 2026 CZ donated about 965,000 dollars from his public wallet to Giggle Academy, 1,440 BNB worth about 872,000 dollars plus 182,620 BinanceLife tokens worth about 93,000 dollars, and retired the address entirely, saying unsolicited meme coins had cluttered it and that even his spam burns were being read as market signals. The wallet is retired by disuse rather than converted into a true burn address.
predict.fun
In December 2025 CZ announced predict.fun, a BNB Chain prediction market incubated by YZi Labs and run by dingaling, the boop.fun founder he had publicly accused of insider trading in May 2025. Coverage framed the venture as enemies reconciled, a reunion CZ never paired with a retraction of the original accusation.
The pardon
On October 23, 2025, President Trump pardoned CZ, erasing the 2023 conviction, as reported by Fortune and Time. BNB and BNB Chain meme coins rallied on the news. Critics cited by The Intercept questioned the pardon's connection to Binance's dealings with Trump family crypto ventures; no wrongdoing regarding the pardon has been established, and CZ and the White House defended it as correcting an overreach.
Significance
CZ's chapter in the trenches proves the attention thesis holds even for a founder actively refusing to play: the market does not require consent, only a feed to front run.
References
- Bitcoinist: https://bitcoinist.com/czs-dog-as-a-memecoin-star-former-binance-ceo/
- Crypto Briefing: https://cryptobriefing.com/cz-warns-against-meme-coins-tied-his-tweets/
- news.bitcoin.com: https://news.bitcoin.com/crypto-news/trader-282k-cz-wallet-marscoin-burn/
- CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/10/29/memecoin-tied-to-cz-statue-crashes-99-after-binance-founder-disowns-it-amid-usd1-2b-volume
- Fortune: https://fortune.com/crypto/2025/10/23/binance-changpeng-zhao-cz-pardon-president-donald-trump/
- time.com: https://time.com/7328278/what-to-know-about-trumps-pardon-of-binances-founder/
- airdropalert.com: https://airdropalert.com/blogs/four-meme-bnb/
- Cointelegraph: https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-a-crypto-trader-turned-3k-into-2m-after-cz-mentioned-a-memecoin
- CCN: https://www.ccn.com/news/crypto/czs-unofficial-giggle-token-raised-millions-charity-people-transparency/
- Crypto Briefing: https://cryptobriefing.com/giggle-academy-token-donation-practices-cz/
- crypto.news: https://crypto.news/cz-sends-965k-to-giggle-academy/
- bbx.com: https://bbx.com/article/504783
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- dingaling dingaling is a pseudonymous NFT whale who founded the meme coin launchpad boop.fun in May
