Binance’s history through the lens of customer custody

If you keep your money on a CEX, and especially on Binance, take a few minutes to read this.

➡️ Let's start with a short Timeline:

2017
Binance launches and grows explosively through rapid listings, minimal transparency and regulatory arbitrage. Speed and volume are prioritised over structure.

2018
Binance avoids a clear headquarters and jurisdiction. Accountability is deliberately blurred. The platform already begins to outgrow competitors in influence.

2019
BNB is positioned as a core power instrument. Fee advantages, ecosystem lock in and preferential treatment increase centralisation.

2020
High leverage derivatives are aggressively pushed. Liquidations become a structural revenue source. Retail exposure to systemic risk rises sharply.

2021
Binance becomes the primary price reference for many altcoins. One exchange effectively defines global price discovery for USDT pairs. A single point of failure is created.

2022
Listings and delistings accelerate. Monitoring tags, rule changes and sudden delistings repeatedly wipe liquidity and price. Retail absorbs losses.
During the FTX collapse, CZ’s public communication accelerates panic. Binance gains further dominance while positioning itself as the stabiliser.

2023
US authorities charge Binance and CZ. CZ pleads guilty. Binance agrees to a roughly 4.3 billion USD resolution.

2024
Vote to List and Vote to Delist are introduced. Binance openly acknowledges risks like vote buying, bribery and coordinated manipulation, and says it will use “vote washing” style anti cheating measures.
Affiliate and KOL programs with revenue shares up to 50 percent dominate crypto narratives. Influence buying becomes systemic by incentive design.

2025
On 10.10, Binance records the lowest point of the sell off at 2025-10-10 21:20 to 21:21 UTC and later publishes a statement about the volatility and sequencing of events.
Binance announces compensation tied to collateral asset depegging incidents during the Oct 10 crash, reported as 20-80B USD by multiple sources.

Binance increasingly promotes internal or aligned products while structurally disadvantaging competitors. Aster is repeatedly framed as Binance backed in coverage on Binance Square, while Hyperliquid is framed as the competing threat in the same media environment.
A pattern!

From the beginning, Binance optimised for dominance.

Fast listings, high leverage, opaque decision making and regulatory arbitrage were not side effects.
They were the strategy.

➡️ Listings and delistings as weapons

Binance listings create instant demand. Delistings destroy liquidity overnight. This power has been used repeatedly.

Projects are listed into hype. Liquidity concentrates. Retail enters. Then come monitoring tags, rule changes or delisting announcements. Liquidity vanishes. Prices collapse. Binance bears no risk. Users do.

And even though they repeatedly claim they receive neither money nor token allocations, they are regularly exposed by devs and founders. They do get allocations. And while their dumping is not always provable, it is obvious, especially because it happens on their own exchange.

When Binance became the primary price reference for hundreds of USDT pairs, it stopped being just another exchange. It became the market.

On 10.10, isolated price wicks on Binance triggered liquidations that did not occur elsewhere. If one venue can liquidate the market while others do not move, price discovery is broken.
Liquidations driven by internal anomalies are not volatility. They are systemic failure.

Yes, Extreme leverage normalised liquidation cascades. Risk was socialised. Profits were internalised. Traders were taught this is normal. It is not.

➡️ Influence buying and narrative control through Binance is real:

Binance built one of the most aggressive KOL and affiliate systems in crypto. High revenue shares turn influencers into sales channels.

Criticism becomes unprofitable. Praise is rewarded. Narratives follow incentives. Votes follow money.

Vote to List and Vote to Delist did not fix this. Binance itself acknowledged risks like vote buying and bribery, and introduced anti manipulation concepts like vote washing. That matters. It confirms influence buying is expected behaviour inside the system.

➡️ Attacking competition is probably the worst:

Binance does not compete fairly, binance competes structurally.

Internal or aligned products are promoted. Competing platforms are marginalised through liquidity, visibility and narrative pressure.

Aster is pushed. Hyperliquid is treated as a threat. This is platform defence.

➡️CZ and responsibility:

CZ built this system. Growth over structure. Speed over safety. Dominance over decentralisation.

After FTX, Binance absorbed even more power while presenting itself as the responsible actor.

In 2023, CZ pleaded guilty and Binance entered a multi agency US resolution. The structure remained.

➡️Why this is bad for crypto:

Crypto was meant to remove gatekeepers.

Binance became one. The biggest. The one. The bank. The state. The control.

Crypto was meant to decentralise trust.
Binance recentralised it.

Crypto needs fair markets. Binance distorted them.

When one exchange can decide listings, delistings, narratives, prices and liquidations, the problem is no longer market risk.

The problem is control.

And control is exactly what crypto was supposed to escape.

And again:
1. The KOL capture is not vague, it is written into the payout rails
Binance publicly markets commission rates “up to 50%” for affiliates, including across spot and futures in program updates. This is enough to turn large accounts into distribution businesses whose income depends on keeping users trading and leveraged.

That creates 3 concrete outcomes:
➡️First, pro Binance narratives are subsidised.
➡️Second, critical voices get drowned out because criticism reduces conversion.
➡️Third, “community sentiment” becomes partially purchased reach, not organic truth.

It is an incentive map.

2. “Community governance” that admits bribery risk is not decentralisation:

Binance leadership and official posts explicitly address the accusation that listing votes are just projects buying votes, and they talk about mechanisms to counter manipulation and vote buying.

If vote buying has to be engineered against, then vote buying exists as a realistic behaviour in this system. This matters because it means listings and delistings can be influenced by money and coordination, even before any token fundamentals enter the conversation.

3. Delisting is not just removal, it is a controlled liquidity event:

Binance ran Vote to Delist, then announced a batch of delistings tied to the results plus internal due diligence.
This is key. Even with voting, Binance keeps final power. That means the platform can externalise blame to “community governance” while retaining ultimate control over outcomes.

4. The Oct 10 crash narrative shows how information control works

Binance publishes its own sequencing and framing, including specific minutes for the lowest point.
Then coverage inside Binance Square includes content claiming systems were fine and liquidation rates were low.
Then compensation reports circulate, including 283 million USD and explanations like thin liquidity, old orders and UI display issues.
Even if you accept every line, the result is the same: one venue had a unique microstructure event that required compensation and narrative management.

5. Again 10.10, never forget!

Binance’s USDT spot market had 430 pairs, 410 had comparable pricing on OKX, Bybit, Bitget, or Gate in the same period, and on 10.10 a total of 103 pairs printed lows more than 10% below the second lowest exchange, with many showing 50% to over 100% deviations.

This is the nightmare scenario. A reference venue printing unique extremes across a wide surface area. In a market where Binance is the dominant reference for many USDT pairs, that becomes forced liquidation reality.

6. Competition silence is not my theory:

If a creator is paid by Binance flow, they have an economic reason to avoid promoting competing venues. If a project needs Binance access, it has a reason to self censor. If a competitor threatens Binance distribution, Binance has multiple non price levers: visibility, listings, partnerships, incentives, narrative.

Thanks for reading.

Thanks for Support.

I am David going up against Goliath.
Most big accounts will not support me or my project.
I need your time, your likes, your replies and your support.
Only this way can we wake people up together.

Thanks to @not_ok_okx for sharing this article in my replys.
Important read again:

https://t.co/P5t6yA9tw9