- A memecoin on BNB Chain soared to a $524 million market value.
- Binance Life got a boost after social media posts from the exchange’s two founders.
Traders are making millions of dollars on Binance Life, a viral memecoin which has soared to a $524 million market value since its October 4 launch, after social media posts from Binance’s two co-founders.
So far, 14 wallets have realised profits of more than $1 million trading the memecoin, according to an October 7 post from Bubblemaps, a blockchain analytics platform.
The top five traders of the memecoin have made more than $9 million combined, onchain data shows.
Endorsement or coincidence?
Binance Life launched at around 1pm London time on October 4 via Four.Meme, a memecoin launchpad on BNB Chain, the Binance affiliated blockchain.
Three hours after launch, Binance co-founder Yi He replied to a community X post in Mandarin with the phrase, “Wishing you a Binance Life.”
It’s the same phrase as the name of the memecoin, which references similar expressions popular in Chinese internet culture.
Initially, the token didn’t gain much traction.
On October 5, Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao also posted the phrase on X in reply to crypto influencer Lin Wanwan using it.
Shortly after, the Chinese crypto community started to latch onto He’s and Zhao’s posts as an endorsement, promoting the Binance Life token and flooding X and Telegram chats with memes.
Then the token began to rally.
By October 6, it hit $50 million market value, and then two days later it soared to an all-time high of $524 million.
To be sure, the phrase Binance Life was in use before October 4. But its use exploded following the launch of the memecoin and the subsequent posts from the Binance co-founders.
Zhao acted as Binance’s CEO until November 2023, when he agreed to resign and pay a $50 million fine to the US government after pleading guilty to violating anti-money laundering laws.
His fellow Binance co-founder, He, still works at the firm as its chief customer service officer.
Binance did not respond to a request for comment.
What is Binance Life?
The phrase “Binance Life” parodies similar phrases “Apple Life” and “Android Life,” which serve as satirical expressions of social class in Chinese internet culture.
Apple Life is positive, and represents a high-end, refined, and affluent lifestyle, while Android Life is negative, and refers to things that are low-end, crude, and ordinary.
Like Apple Life, Binance Life is used as a positive signifier in the Chinese crypto community for those who use the Binance crypto exchange and have made money investing in Binance-affiliated crypto tokens.
The Binance Life token is notable because it is one of the first memecoins with a name written in Mandarin to gain traction.
On social media, influencers have pushed the token to their followers with the goal of it becoming the first Mandarin-name token to get listed on Binance.
The hype surrounding Binance Life has set off a fresh wave of memecoin trading on BNB Chain.
Several new tokens with names based on popular Binance memes have soared to market values in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Like most memecoins, their value is volatile. Binance Life suddenly shed 65% of its value in the span of 24 hours on Wednesday.
It has since partially recovered, and trades at around a $260 million market value.
Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.
