The clamor of meme can become the nutrient of the ecosystem, but only those who cultivate deeply can reap the final fruits.
Author: Nicky, Foresight News
On the afternoon of March 19, CZ changed his X platform avatar to a personal image wearing a Muslim white robe. This seemingly personalized move was instantly interpreted as the "ultimate endorsement of the Middle East narrative" against the backdrop of the lingering aftermath of the MGX investment incident.
The token ALLAH (Arabic for "God") with this avatar as its Logo surged nearly 40 times in 1 hour, with a market cap exceeding $6 million, while the CZ-named token CZ, which rode the wave, plummeted nearly 80% after surging 1600%, not due to technical flaws, but because its naming was completely unrelated to Middle Eastern culture.
On March 12, the news of Abu Dhabi's technology investment company MGX investing $2 billion in Binance was like a meteor, instantly igniting the "Middle East narrative" gunpowder keg on the BNB Chain. From "mubarak" to "Mashallah", from the community's spontaneous meme contest to He Yi and CZ personally joining in the fun, this carnival not only created several meme coins with market caps in the tens of millions of dollars, but also revealed a secret wealth code in the crypto world: the synergistic effect of centralized leaders and decentralized communities.
In this craze, the strategic layout of the Binance wallet, the creativity of the community, and the symbols of Middle Eastern culture intertwined to form a unique "meme manufacturing logic".
Starting Point: A Picture of an "Arab Rich Kid Editor"
It all started with a picture posted by the Binance Chinese account on March 13: the image showed a SpongeBob passerby wearing an Arab headdress and a large gold chain with the Binance logo, with the caption "👀 The editor imagines himself like this on the way to work today:".
Sensitive developers immediately took action, and within 24 hours, mubarak, named after the Arabic word for "blessing", was launched. Subsequently, CZ posted a meme image with his own avatar on the Binance Square personal account, captioned "Going to see a friend this weekend😂", further fueling the heat.
From "Cultural Symbol" to "Wealth Creation Machine"
The uniqueness of this carnival lies in the fact that it is not solely dependent on financial logic, but rather transforms Arabic daily expressions into crypto assets.
For example, Mashallah (praise be to God) and Inshallah (God willing) are blessings of the Middle Eastern people, but after CZ dug up his old tweets from 2021 and reinterpreted them, the related tokens skyrocketed to over $10 million in market value.
After He Yi posted a personal meme image wearing a headscarf, the community immediately derived a female version "Mubarakah" and a queen version "QMubarak", further expanding the narrative dimension.
Community's Carnival of Secondary Creation: The Self-Replication of Memes
When He Yi joked on March 13 about the "mysterious person in the top right corner" of the organizational chart, she might not have expected it to trigger a nationwide meme-making campaign. Users not only replaced the mysterious person with Musk, V-God, and even their own avatars, but also derived the namesake token Palu, with a market value exceeding $10 million. This "official meme-throwing - community meme-catching - token monetization" industrial chain has become the standardized production process of BNB Chain memes.
The token BNB Card was also created in this way. On the morning of March 18, when the BNB Chain Chinese account posted a minimalist card image with the "BNB Chain" text, without a whitepaper link or token contract address, only a sloppy credit card-like text and a "Wangzai" cartoon avatar, it unexpectedly ignited the community's creative desire.
In the evening, when He Yi posted a meme image with her personal avatar and the caption "bnb.cards the humble He Yi is listening to advice", this "blank-style marketing" actually stimulated the community's creativity, causing the token to soar to a market value of nearly $10 million.
Technical Empowerment
Going back to March 19, 2024, the BNB Chain official account released a "Creating BEP20 Token Tutorial" video, and developer YerasylAmanbek casually created a test token TUT in the demo.
A year later, it unexpectedly gained a $40 million market value due to CZ's like and Binance Alpha's listing. Behind this is BNB Chain's carefully designed "developer and user-friendly" strategy:
- Zero-fee wallet policy to reduce transaction friction
- Sub-second block confirmation speed to improve speculation efficiency
- Liquidity support program to provide exit channels for whales
- BNB Chain also established the "BNB Goodwill Alliance" on March 18 to promote the reduction of malicious MEV attacks.
Role Reversal: CZ and He Yi's "Populist Tactics"
Unlike technical leaders like V-God, CZ and He Yi are shaping an "crypto Elon Musk" image.
CZ's Identity Transformation
In February, when the community designed Binance Logo-bearing emojis for the test token TST, CZ jokingly said "should charge a copyright fee", indirectly endowing it with legitimacy; he then retweeted Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho's post about issuing a celebrity token (later deleted), triggering on-chain FOMO; until after the Abu Dhabi investment incident, he personally bought 1 BNB each of mubarak and TST, completely transitioning from "observer" to "participant".
He Yi's "Contrast Marketing"
- Visual Disruption: Posting "Golden Barbie" meme images to break the serious image of exchange executives.
- Discourse Deconstruction: Using self-deprecating phrases like "the humble He Yi is listening to advice" and "DDDD (take care of the little brother)" in tweets to create a more down-to-earth persona.
- Deep Immersion: Personally joining Meme coin-related WeChat groups to discuss "on-chain meme" projects with core Meme users, strengthening the perception of "community co-building".
The essence of this strategy is "power ceding", by dissolving the authority of centralized institutions (such as self-deprecation and meme-making), in exchange for the emotional recognition of the Binance ecosystem by the community. When users feel that "CZ is also playing memes" and "He Yi and I are speculating on the same coin", the BNB Chain Meme craze is no longer simply speculation, but a "equal participation" crypto carnival.
From the initial test token TST to the pet dog Broccoli, and then the rise of mubarak, a cruel yet interesting truth is revealed: in the crypto world, influence is capital, and community consensus is the moat. When CZ's single like is worth tens of millions of dollars, and He Yi's self-deprecating meme can spawn a new token, the traditional financial valuation model has become invalid in the Meme world.
The future winners may be those who can both crack the "social code" of leaders and sense the undercurrents of community emotions. After all, in the battlefield of Meme, the biggest Alpha is often hidden in the emoticons of tweets and the mass frenzy of the comment section.
But in this never-ending "game of cards", players need to be clear-headed:
- The casino never sleeps, but the ecosystem has thresholds: The Meme craze is like a mirage in the desert, seemingly full of opportunities but actually hiding dangers. If you blindly chase every narrative, you may eventually get lost in the liquidity desert, and your wealth will disappear like sand.
- Chips are cognition: Choosing an ecosystem is like choosing a poker table. The advantage of the BNB Chain is the continuous investment by the official, but players still need to see the cards in their hands (capital scale, risk tolerance, technical analysis) and avoid exhausting their ammunition on the wrong battlefield.
- Time is the ultimate judge: From Uniswap's "meme culture" to Dogecoin's community faith, the market will ultimately reward those projects that transform "speculative symbols" into "consensus building". Just as TUT evolved from a teaching video demonstration token to an official asset on Binance Alpha, Meme can be the starting point of creativity, but only continuous value creation can transcend the cycle.
The fairness of the crypto market is precisely reflected in its cold equality for all roles:
- Speculators enjoy the thrill of the moment, but must bear the cost of large slippage fees, or even the price of being reduced to zero.
- Builders endure the long and lonely cultivation, but may get nothing in return.
The frenzy of the Middle Eastern narrative will eventually cool down, but what will remain on the BNB Chain will not only be the soaring and plunging K-lines. Those teams that truly understand the community's needs, such as TUT, which reduces the development threshold through tutorial videos, or Mubarak, which transforms cultural symbols into long-term IPs, are proving that the clamor of Meme can be the nutrient of the ecosystem, but only those who dig deep can reap the final fruits.
