Chinese entrepreneur calls out Binance Wallet, crypto traders, scammers, over meme token listing

A Chinese entrepreneur is in a very public round of terse exchanges with Binance Wallet and the broader crypto space, demanding that the exchange delist a meme token using both his name and profile picture without permission. 

Binance Wallet has responded by blocking the token from search results, but the asset remains present on the blockchain, much to Luo Yonghao’s frustration. And the volley of snide comments via posts on his X profile has not stopped. 

Why is Luo Yonghao criticizing Binance?

Luo Yonghao, one of China’s most recognizable internet entrepreneurs, took to social media to publicly confront Binance (BNB) co-founder Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, after discovering that an unauthorized meme coin bearing his name and profile picture had appeared on Binance Wallet. 

He posted a message on the social media platform X, directed to Changpeng Zhao (CZ), demanding that the token be delisted to prevent people from being deceived or that a formal channel for complaints be opened.

He noted that the token had not yet entered the main “Trading Platform” tab and was only visible in the “Wallet” tab, but it was still accessible through Binance’s infrastructure. 

Following his complaint, Binance Wallet appears to have restricted the visibility of the token as users can no longer search for it by name, though direct links or contract addresses may still work. 

However, when one user pointed out that Binance Wallet had blurred his name in their display, Luo pushed back, stating that his profile picture was still visible and unblurred, so users could still be misled.

In a follow-up post, Luo expressed his frustration with the nature of blockchain, noting that even if Binance changes its display, other platforms will still be able to see it. Once a token is live on-chain, it can’t be modified.

Luo Yonghao has serious beef with crypto 

Yonghao was not done. Referencing the original vision of Bitcoin, Yonghao wrote that while Satoshi Nakamoto designed cryptocurrency to help people escape exploitation by state institutions, the practical result has been that people are instead exploited by scammers who are, in his view, even less “unscrupulous” than governments. 

When a comment suggested that Yonghao should leverage the situation to get into crypto, he revealed that he had been approached by ICO promoters as far back as 2018. 

“If I had no shame, back in ’18 I’d have launched an ICO to fleece the sheep, and bought myself a little island to retire on by now.”

2018 was a period of peak crypto mania when projects that remain to date ran legitimate initial coin offerings (ICOs) while scammers also exploited it as a common vehicle for fraud. 

As of 2019, Luo debuted on China’s “deadbeat” blacklist for over $14 million in debts following the collapse of Smartisan Technology, which had accumulated a total debt of $89 million. However, despite his financial difficulties at the time, Luo claimed that he turned them down. 

He insisted that those scammers told him he did not even need to formally endorse their projects and only needed to stay silent and not publicly deny them, in return for generous pay. 

As Cryptopolitan reported late last year, Binance Wallet launched “Meme Rush,” a wallet-exclusive market where only Binance Wallet users can buy new meme tokens during their earliest phases. This has made Binance Wallet a gateway for the launch of thousands of new tokens, many of them inspired by public figures, brands, and internet culture. 

Chinese meme coins have surged in recent months, with some tokens growing from near-zero liquidity to market caps in the hundreds of millions of dollars within days, driven largely by sentiment and viral social media activity.

CZ himself has previously cautioned traders that rushing to buy meme coins based solely on viral posts and online hype almost guarantees losses.