Unchained - Binance Listing Fee Fight: What's a Fair Price to List on the Top Crypto Exchange? - Ep. 925

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

When CJ Hetherington revealed the token listing terms Binance allegedly offered his startup, the crypto world exploded. In this episode, CJ, founder of prediction market app Limitless, and his investor Nick Tomaino of 1confirmation join Laura to discuss why he went public, how Binance responded, and what the incident reveals about the power dynamics between exchanges and builders. The conversation tackles how retail gets dumped on, why transparency is the next frontier for crypto, and why both guests agree that the “revolution won’t be centralized.” Guests: CJ Hetherington, CEO/CO-Founder at Limitless Labs Nick Tomaino, Founder and General Partner at 1confirmation Links: CJ’s tweet  Unchained:  Coinbase Adds Rival Binance’s BNB to Listing Roadmap Binance Claims It Does Not Profit From Token Listings Timestamps: 🔥 0:00 Introduction 🗣️ 2:24 Why CJ decided to reveal Binance’s alleged listing terms 🏗️ 8:44 Why he built Limitless on Base 🤝 9:11 Whether Base coordinated with CJ before he went public 💥 13:04 How the crypto world reacted to CJ’s viral tweet 🧨 15:00 Whether Binance exploits projects and founders 💸 18:06 How short-term founders dump on retail investors, per CJ 📢 23:18 Binance’s response—and why they called CJ’s claims false 🔍 25:38 Why CJ and Nick say Binance needs far more transparency ⚠️ 30:42 Whether CJ fears retaliation for calling out the world’s biggest exchange 🤔 33:48 Why he doesn’t buy Binance’s claim that its policies “protect users” 💫 39:36 Why Nick is urging crypto founders and users to “believe in something” 🚀 42:03 CJ’s plan to build an “army of token holders” and make Limitless succeed 🪙 48:25 Inside Limitless’s community token sale 📈 50:34 What Nick learned from Polymarket’s rise as an early investor 👀 54:10 Coinbase adding BNB to its listing roadmap Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is like a general kind of macro trend and wave which is happening. The revolution will not be centralized. The whole idea of a centralized company charging for, starting fees for a listing, getting some of the token and then dumping it on like retail. As CG said, it's antithetical to really why I care about this space and why I'm here. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin.

Today's topic is Binance and token listings. Here to discuss our CJ Heatherington, CEO and co-founder at Limitless Labs, and Nick Tomato, founder and general partner at One Confirmation. Welcome, CJ and Nick. What's up? So, CJ, you went viral on Tuesday with a tweet in which you revealed the terms that finance offered to you to list your token on their exchange. I'm just going to read what you tweeted.

1% air drop on day 1, alpha listing. 3% further air drops in 6 months. So this is like 1% of your token for this air drop, et cetera. So 3% for further air drops in 6 months. 1% for marketing at finance. Binance is full discretion. Yeah, they would provide 100% of TVL for the token pool and pancake swap at $1 million plus. You would have to put down a $250,000 security deposit.

3% of the tokens reserved for B&B holder program, which Hodler program, which this is like where B&B token holders earn air drops from tokens that are soon to list on finance. You'd also have to pay another 200K worth of tokens for Binance affiliate marketers. And then you would also have to pay $2 million in a B&B security deposit for the spot listing. So it takes courage to reveal the terms that the world's largest crypto exchange is offering you, since these deals are obviously meant to be confidential. And so you know when you're doing that, that you're going to be burning that bridge. And that's the bridge to the number one most powerful centralized entity in crypto.

So walk me through your thought process that led you to tweet that because that takes balls. So explain how you came to. that decision. Well, you know, I think it was a very unique case because there were no confidentiality agreements in place. So I wasn't actually, you know, obliged to necessarily keep any of that information secret. And, you know, I think that truth is a very important thing and we need more of it in the world. And there's a lot of, you know, speculation and back and forth about how sex listings actually work and finance in particular. And, at least, you know, I'm not a lot of speculation. And think that it was just, you know, my hope that by sharing this, we can actually move the

space forward and kind of rip off the bandit, have a very, like, constructive, yet productive like discussion. And actually, you know, I think that something that people are maybe not that aware of is that there is like a large cohort of people, which some may call it cabal, right, which consists of not only centralized exchanges, but also founders. and market makers. And, you know, when you're like probably a long-term investor or founder, you look at this kind of, you know, offer and you think like, how on earth does 8% of the entire network, right, makes sense if we're talking about

the next three, five, or even 10 years, you know, of a new ecosystem? But this cohort of people, they don't think in three, five, or 10 years. think about their one listing and dumping on their one. And I guess that changes the entire calculus because they're really not thinking long term at all and they're just trying to generate exit liquidity from retail who are like hardworking like ordinary people with with skin in the game who like believe in these tokens that are actually getting dumped on. And that's the thing that I want to change because we just literally we won't last very long as a space of this is what we're doing because it's not sustainable.

It's actually crime, by the way. And yeah, I really respect finance. I really respect CZ for everything they've done like for the space in general. But that said, you know, I really believe it's important to have open and constructive, you know, conversations and feedback from the market and like really change how we approach like token launches and distributions and communities in general. So, Nick, so I don't know if you knew in advance that C.J. was going to defeat that, did you?

No, no. This is the thing. I see some people saying this is some marketing thing to promote limitless or something. That's not how I operate or really anyone in kind of our orbit operates. It's like we tell the truth. And I think a lot of people in the space are afraid to tell the truth. truth, right? About because if you're a founder and, you know, this giant is important, is perceived to be important for tokens, then you don't want to piss them off, right? But in my career, I've always been surprised to the upside of what happens when you actually just tweet the truth. And so I think we need more people in the world, really, founders in the space, people in the world like CJ. And I know CJ in real life, right? There's so many people in crypto that are Twitter fingers focused on perception and not really doing anything in real life.

CJ is a young, hungry, tough kid in real life. This dude's a boxer, okay? Like, a real life boxer. Like, he's, and he's just being himself. So I just, I just love to see that. To me, Binance is really irrelevant. I've never used to Binance product. I don't really know anything about what they do.

I tried the product when it first came out in 2017. I logged in. I never traded, but I wanted to see how it worked. And it's never, for me, I'm interested in Bleeding Edge crypto, products that are pushing the space forward. And respect to Binance for being a behemoth, right, and being a fast follower on these things. But it's just, it's never interested me.

And the story really isn't Binance. It's we need more founders that are, that are willing to show some courage and be themselves. And that's what CJ did. And to me, really, the other interesting thing is just the response to it, right? I think that the response on both sides is very interesting. And we can talk about that. Yeah, yeah.

So before we get into that, because I do want to ask about that, CJ, I just wanted to understand, you know, I asked you about, like, what led you to finally tweet that. And it sort of sounds like you had been noodling on these problems for a lot of. long time. And then you kind of had this moment where they sent you the terms and you hadn't signed an NDA and you were just like, I'm just going to run with this. Is that kind of how that happened? Like, because like, like they could like you could have signed it and then and like, sorry, they could have sent it to you in advance and, you know, made you sign it before revealing whatever the terms were. And so then like you wouldn't have been in this position. But like somebody potentially would

have had the opportunity that you had where they didn't sign it in advance. advance, but like it wouldn't occur to them to reveal it. So like, yeah, explain kind of just what happened in your head there. Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, I definitely didn't expect that it would get millions of views. I thought it would maybe get like 100,000 views. And honestly, like, I just wanted to compare the two ecosystems like for other builders, right? Because I get asked the question, like literally multiple times per week.

Like, why do you decide to like build them base? build on base. Like, literally I'm tired of you ask this question. And so, and then when I was thinking about it, you know, I was like, well, this is like the approach of one ecosystem and this is the approach of the other. Like, and I just wanted to share that with the world and be like, isn't it kind of obvious guys? And yeah, truthfully didn't expect that, you know, it would blow up as much as it did, probably. Okay. But can you share why it is that you chose to build on base? Well, I mean, I think that it's a very supportive, like, build their ecosystem and doesn't have like these kind of like token supply grabs. And if you build something meaningful, I feel like you'll get supported not only by climate as an entity, but by the broader community as well.

But I think the point is this wasn't like some super calculated thing, right? It's like, and you've, you've tweeted other things kind of like this before. It's like, it's just how you feel and you posted it. And this one in particular blew up, right? I think when you're telling the truth on Twitter, it's like, you know, a lot of, a lot of what you post really doesn't get any engagement at all, right? Because you're not chasing what the popular thing is or whatever. But sometimes it strikes a chord and this one struck a chord, right?

Huh. This is really interesting because, honestly, one of the questions that I had written for you was if it was calculated. And the reason is, last week, Jesse Pollock tweeted multiple times about centralized exchanges charging an arm and a leg for listings. He said, raise your hand if you are ready to go to war against sex listings that charge 2 to 9% of a token supply to be listed. And he tweeted this multiple times.

So I kind of actually thought that maybe like you guys. had planned this out, but it sounds like it was much more spur of the moment. No, it definitely wasn't like orchestrated. But I would say that, you know, like Jesse, like Jesse is, you know, not the determiner of public sentiment, right? And I feel like a lot of people, you know, recently after this, you know, very kind of large scale cascading liquidation event, which occurred, which is, in a way, almost impossible to say that it wasn't pure market manipulation because you have cases where you know, liquidity vanished from order bugs. And to me, it looked pretty obviously like an

orchestrated attack on retail investors and very much a drive-by on retail investors. And so I think that, you know, it's not only the kind of the listing, you know, that has created this like negative sentiment. I do believe that central centralized exchange sentiment, is it an all-time low? I don't believe that's just because of Jesse or just because of coinbase. I think that's because the on-chain world is becoming much, much bigger and seeing a lot more adoption and attention. And people are kind of waking up to these like extraction and manipulation games and they

know that there is a better way. Well, and if I can add, this is like a just long-term macro trend, okay? Like in 1992, Hal Finney wrote the computer can be used as a tool to liberate and protect people rather than control them. Right. And that's why I'm still in this space and I care about it so much. And I think a lot of people look at the early cypherpunk movement as kind of anti-government, right? And the focus is on the government aspect of it and government control. And I think that's very real.

But if you look at the current administration in the U.S., okay, it's very much a pro-freedom government now. And if you look at what the SEC is doing with the crypto tax force and, you know, the CFTC, and there's a lot of a big push, really, for more freedom, for more freedom for entrepreneurs and people generally. And when you have that, that opens the door for big companies to control people. Right? And so I think it's on the people. It's not on regulators. It's on the people to kind of rise up and and call it out when it's happening. And it's not to say it's evil or but we need to talk we need to have honest conversations about it more. And to me, that's kind of some of the discussion that we're seeing post CJ's tweet. Yeah. Well, CJ, you also tweeted,

And haters told me no one would want to work with us after such a tweet. The reality is more people are reaching out than ever. So tell us a little bit more about what happened behind the scenes after your tweet. Well, yeah. I mean, like, you know, this was the kind of knee-jerk reaction. There were two kind of men like floods towards Limitplus, the first one being that no one would want to work with us. And the second one being that no centralized exchanges, whatever, list our token. And I can say with certainty that neither of those things are true, but also don't feel comfortable disclosing, like, precise details about any of that right now because a lot of wheels are still in motion.

But definitely we have a lot of exciting partnerships coming up, you know, from across the board, really, like from trading firms that are getting into prediction markets to decentralized exchanges, other on-channel apps. more so like financial institutions. A lot of people are excited about limitless and working with limitless. And the events of the last few days didn't change that at all. If anything, they kind of accelerated us. Wow. Okay. Like it almost sounds like what you're saying is that there was kind of general sentiment, you know, whether or not it was like we don't have to say specifically it was against finance,

but maybe just like interest in more things happening on chain and less interest in things happening in a centralized manner or something. And so like when they realized you were sort of part of that movement, they were like, hey, let's work together. Is that maybe how to characterize it? Yeah, I think also what Nick said, you know, this is like a general kind of macro like trend and web which is happening. Like the revolution will not be centralized, you know.

We're televised. Okay. So I guess, so Nick, you know, as you mentioned, you have invested in CJ. And I wondered like, you know, for you over the years, I'm sure you've worked with like so many different teams where there is this calculus about like, you know, finance has a lot of influence in the industry. They, you know, are the largest centralized exchange. You know, they have users just like in so many different jurisdictions all around the globe. And, you know, CZ himself is very influential. So like, you know, over the years, how have you seen other founders tried to grapple with this question of like sort of the double-edged sword of getting a finance token listing?

Maybe some of our founders have gotten finance token listings in the past, but it's not never something I've focused on or care about. I want founders who want to push crypto forward to be themselves and build products that push the space forward. It's like that the token game in crypto has never really been my thing, I guess. So I do think tokens are very important as a way to give ownership to users. And so I very much encourage teams to first build products and then do, do token drops to users. Like I think that's a great thing. It's one of the biggest innovations of crypto.

And then where that gets listed, you know, I think if there's demand for it, it will, you know, it will get listed places and, you know, people, other people own it. Like the whole idea of a centralized company charging for, charging fees for a listing, getting some of the token, and then dumping it on like retail, as CG said, it's just, it's antithetical to really why I care about this space and why I'm here. So, and the thing that I just think you need to be mindful of is people and companies that are projecting themselves too strongly and projecting narratives that are deceptive. And, you know, FTX, right?

FTX was projecting their narrative super strongly. And it wasn't the regulators that took FTX down, right? It wasn't the mainstream media. It was the crypto community. And I think there's, to me, the ethos of crypto is like more transparency, more truth. And for people watching that, like, that care about truth, the truth is in the comments, okay? It's not in the O.P. The, you know, the people strongly projecting.

You need to study the comments. And of course, with, you know, the AI and bots, that can be hard now, too. But I very strongly think that the truth is in the comments. And that's kind of what you need to look out for. I did want to actually just like Nick very briefly alluded to this. And I know CJ, you have a lot of comments on this. You know, Nick talked about how there are token teams. and VCs who will dump tokens.

It's sort of like a kind of get rich quick mentality with the tokens. And CJ, you mentioned before we started recording that you have a lot to say about that. So give us a little bit more color on what you're talking about. Yeah. So there is the like, I mean, as Nick said, right? Sometimes the truth is not in the OP, it's in the comments.

And sometimes the truth about the token supply is not necessarily, in the tokenomics sheet which is published by a particular team. And what happens is there is very much kind of gray area within these supply distributions where people are willing to pay like 8% of token supply, which can never be like long-term sustainable for the majority of networks, which ultimately just has really dire consequences for the hardworking people that believe in this, buy into this, right?

Because ultimately they are like the exit liquidity and they're the ones like getting dumped on. And so that's actually why we see a lot of like this kind of like listing fee structure actually being accepted is because people are not playing long term games. People are out for kind of very short term extraction and like dumping on retail. And there are actually a lot of bad actors. that, you know, I'm calling out here. And, you know, this is also what Nick mentioned,

when you can look at the responses to this truth and transparency, you kind of clearly see two camps of people, right? And there are camps of people who are like, this is for sure bad and it doesn't even make sense because they're thinking in three, five, 10 year horizons and from the perspective of not doing crime, and then there is another, you know, kind of, tribe of people who are like, you know, pushing back heavily against this level of transparency.

And potentially, you know, that's because they're on the wrong side of this and on the wrong side of history. Okay. So I do want to also just ask one other thing because, you know, everybody was talking about how their proposal to you was to take 8% of the tokens. And, you know, if you look at the proposal, it was for specific purposes. You know, 1% for like this air drop, 3% for further air drops over six months, 1% for marketing, another 3% for their B&B Hodler program.

So it wasn't like, you know, give us 8%. It was like we're going to use it for these specific purposes. And as I'm sure you're very well aware, everybody is talking about how this sort of like phase that we're in right now with crypto, is distribution. And that's why people are saying like, oh, like, you know, Stripes, stable coin efforts are gonna be really strong

because they have distribution. Or the reason why people wanna build on base is because, you know, like if you get your, like any coins on any, you know, base dexes immediately get, are tradable on Coinbase. So again, it's like a distribution play. So, you know, the devil's advocate question to what happened this week when you tweeted their proposal is just they can do this because

there is a benefit to reaching their huge number of users. So what do you say to that, that like actually what they're doing is not only smart, but it is beneficial to those token teams. It's beneficial to them if they're dumping on day one, but not if they want to build a long-term sustainable token network. But even though like some of this is for like longer, like, you know, 3% is like for, you know, air drops over several months, like, like you still feel like this is just more a get rich quick kind of offer.

I mean, there's data for this, right? Like I think we can look at, I don't know it off the top of my head, but you can look at the performance of the finance launch pad or whatever their products called and how those tokens have performed, right? And my guess is that they have. not performed well for their user, for the people that are buying into those. But they, you know, it performed great for Binance and maybe even good for the token teams who, as CJ said, could dump. So and no one's, Binance is a great, they've to this date been a great business. No one's saying

they don't have the right to do this. And maybe it's even smart. If they, if their goal is to accumulate as much money, power as they possibly can, right? Then, then maybe, you know, It's a good strategy. But I think to me, the, again, the interesting thing, which we haven't even talked about is the finance response to this, okay? Which was the finance support threatened to sue CJ and then deleted it. And then CZ, you know, called CJ a loser, right? That's a little weird, don't you think?

Yeah, yeah. So, okay, I'll fill everybody in on all those things. Okay, so basic, so there was like a funny moment. You posted what I guess was like a fake screenshot saying that CZ had blocked you. He quote tweeted and was like, wow, this guy is really cloud chasing, but what a loser. I didn't even know who he was until he posted this fake image thing. I blocked him. I could make it real, but I will choose mute instead.

Ignore is the best rejection. And then you tweeted back something like, oh, I played you or what did you say? Something like, Cisi. you got played. Played yourself. That was a neat. That was obvious anyone paying attention knows like that was a meme, right? Like C.J and CZ responded to it.

We just with a complete lack of awareness. Yeah. Okay. So then there was another one where Binance said your post was false and defamatory. But then also said that your tweet contained illegal and unauthorized disclosure of confidential communications with finance. And people were pointing out. They were like, wait, it can't be both.

It's either false and defamatory or it's like a real offer. And then, of course, they had the, you know, veiled threat to take legal action against you. And that's what they deleted. And then the other thing is that CZ during this time posted the long story about how Binance made a bunch of its ICO participants whole, sorry, not from the Binance or ICO, but from like other ICOs back in the 2017 era and how at that time, it caused. cost them $6 million, which was 40% of all the money that they had. And he, like, made it into the story about, you know, how, like,

finance always puts its users first or whatever. And then somebody quote tweeted it and said, oh, wow, CZ is, like, shitting his pants. Or I forget the language they use. But these were some of the things that happened in the aftermath. So I guess, why don't you comment on, you know, how you are reading their response? I don't know. I don't know what to make of it. I think it's just, I think it's interesting.

And I think the response the other way is almost more interesting, right? You can, again, if you're looking at the real organic human response and not bots, you can tell what side the, you know, the truth is on. And there's a lot of people kind of organically. And again, I don't know the specifics of, you know, all the things they're saying. There's experts on finance. but like you can tell that there's people that are increasingly questioning, you know, Binance's practices.

And to me, a tweet that you didn't mention that is quite interesting. And I actually, I would love if there's anyone watching that's like a kind of an on-chain sleuth that can actually get the true inflows and outflows numbers on finance exchange, that would be, I think, very useful because the, you know, the girl co-founder, his girlfriend or whatever, tweeted, you know, they're all tweeting these inflow and outflow numbers. And I think she tweeted the defy llama ones. What is the true?

And I don't know the answer. I think my point is let's have a discussion about it and let's get some more transparency because the benefit of being on chain is you can see the actual numbers. And there's no questions about what's the true inflows, outflows. If you go to Uniswap and look at their TVL or Ave or aerodrome or any of these, right? You can see the actual numbers. And I think in the case of finance, inflows and outflows, it'd be very interesting for someone to look and see what are the true numbers because there's very conflicting numbers that I've seen. Yeah.

So the coin glass, the tweet that sparked this discussion was so coin glass on Tuesday, basically, what is this? It's like a little over, it's like 15 hours, I think, after C.J's tweet, tweeted that Binance had experienced $21.7 billion in outflows over the past seven days. But then when, so if I just look at defy, defy llama at the moment, it's saying that finance had $248 million in flows over the last seven days. So it's not exactly the same because today is the sixth. But it's strange because, you know, obviously we had, there was like the liquidations.

There, like, there's been a lot of kind of like negative news for finance over the last seven days. And it doesn't feel like like more than $22 billion worth would have flipped in the last two days since the coin glass tweet. So, yeah, that's. Why are the defy llama and coin glass numbers so different? That's what I, that's what someone, maybe someone watching. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no. But you guys, wait, wait, wait, wait, this is interesting. Okay.

On, when I click on the coin glass link, which is current. So, so before I was just reading the tweet that they tweeted on Tuesday, but now when I click on the link, it actually says over the past seven days, Binance has had $356 million in inflows. So, that's interesting. So their inflows changed. So if on Tuesday night, it was almost $22 billion in outflows, but then this is Thursday at noon. So what is, it's not quite 40 hours. It's like 39-ish hours.

Suddenly it's at a positive $356 million, which is much closer to the Defy Lama, $2505 million. And so that's interesting. We're not going to figure it out right here. But I just wanted to note that. Another interesting thing just while we're on this topic is that hyperliquid was ranked number one by liquidations. When we had all of those liquidations a few days ago, like hyperliquid was ranked number one. But most probably centralized exchanges under report the tricks. of liquidations. And the reason why hyperliquid was number one is just because their liquidations were like fully on-jet.

Huh. Right. So who, yeah, who knows? I mean, yeah, I guess finance, their reimbursement was just limited to the ones involving those three assets, the USDA, what was it, B and Sol and then WBE. So, yeah, so that's not really indicative of like what happened on the chain. kind of like when you know in totality i know let's talk about the tweet that i accidentally showed on screen a little bit earlier which i didn't mean to do but we're using a new platform that i'm familiar with it which is why that happens so you saw it cj i know you did it said see z going to bury this project that's the one so um like i wanted to ask you about that because like you know i don't know so they you know you guys have this back and forth they you know kind of made this veiled attempt at a legal threat, and then they pulled it back by deleting the tweet. Clearly, sentiment is against them. Like, are you worried at all? Like, at this point, you know,

obviously, I'm sure your token probably isn't going to get listed there. But like, is there anything that you worry about that they could do, you know, regardless? Or do you feel like, you know, it like, yeah, just what's done is done, but they can't hurt you otherwise. I'm just curious. You know, I think that, like, as a space and, like, as an industry, we still have a way to go, especially, like, for on-chain apps. It's only, you know, pretty recently that on-chain apps really started to break out. And I think there's still a long way to go from, like, the current state of what are mostly centralized businesses that kind of build on top of crypto and make some, you know, integrations with that.

and like have like crypto deposits but are still ultimately like custodial products. And I really think we'd do better to help each other. And not to try to fight against like honest and open conversations, but actually to embrace them and to embrace kind of like constructive feedback and kind of help each other actually to build like a better industry. Yeah, I think that's well said. I just want to add, I mean, I get that sentiment because, look, they buried FTX, right? And they're very powerful. So completely hear that. But as CJ said,

it's like, I think truth rises to the top over time. And having honest, transparent discussions rather than these kind of tribal wars is definitely what we need to move towards. So much of crypto is so tribal and it's a great thing in a sense, right? In some ways, it's why Bitcoin is what it is and why the space has grown. But I think we get into these kind of memetic battles that turn out to be zero-sum. And what we really want to do is recognize that it's still a positive sum, right? Like, U.S. politics is zero-sum, right? Because there's no growth anymore. So it's just these kind of lame tribal battles, but like crypto is still growing and we want to basically have honest discussions and push forward. Okay.

Well, you know, just I guess one last thing that I wanted to ask you about was, you know, their final word on this was this clarification tweet where they sort of describe the listing process and, you know, the purpose of kind of the different demands. that they had. So they said, quote, Binance does not make money from the listing process. All project token allocations go 100% to users through marketing campaigns, including Alpha AirDrops, LaunchPool, Hodler AirDrops, trading events, earned APR campaigns and more. Our business model is simple, small trading fees,

not listing revenue. To protect users, Binance requires a refundable security deposit from projects. It acts as a safeguard against short-term exploitation and ensures the project team stays committed post-listing. Once a project meets its commitments, the full deposit is returned. If you're in the early stages of your project, finance alpha is the best go to market path, no listing fees, just visibility, education,

and growth, et cetera, et. So I was just curious, like, do you know, like everybody knows that in crypto, incentives, farming, like all these things are kind of like tools that, that, you know, different teams use. And that's sort of what they're saying here is like we're using it, you know, to, you know, have people like farm in these different ways. Like, do you, do you, do you, yeah, just do you take them to task for that? Or do you feel like that is sort of a legitimate reason? Or, you know, what do you think of this way that they're framing these offers that they're making? I would willing to be the counterparty for this bet. Meaning that you would, that like your token will succeed without, without all that.

No, no. I mean, like, I would like to, I mean, like, if, If this was a prediction market and you would quote me some odds that this is true, I would be willing to bet against you. Okay. So you feel like this is just extraction and their users will dump and it won't help the projects that take this deal? Yeah. I don't believe that these kind of like supply distributions are.

like a net positive thing for for users and for retail investors and i would be willing to like bet against that and as nick said you know there you can just look at the data right like we can just look like we can just look at the chart um for for you know like finance alpha listings and the kind of the proof is there okay and nick what do you think of what they said i don't Even I didn't register with me, honestly. Like I think at this point, I think we're talking way too much about tokens. And it's like prediction markets are taking crypto mainstream in a way that like no other product has. And it's ultimately the products that matter, right?

We need it's like there's so much like inward nonsense that we focus on in crypto. And it's like let's focus on the products that are pushing us. based forward, let's forget about what tribe we're on, forget about, you know, this token, that token. It's like, let's focus on prediction markets. And, you know, limitless is one of the leading on-chain prediction markets, right? That is, I think, has a chance to really onboard new users crypto. And that's kind of, that's what I care about.

So talk about that when you said, like, we're too focused on tokens. Do you feel like it's almost like crypto is trying to use tokens to resolve problems? that are better resolved in other ways or something? Oh, well, look, I get it. Everyone, the initial use case for me, for pretty much everyone in crypto. When I was, you know, in my early 20s, it's like you don't have a lot of money, you want to make money any way you can. And tokens, meme coins, token listings, you know, whatever hype narrative is,

looks like a way to make money for young people, right? And it's not necessarily a bad thing either. I think like as much as you can try to be paternalistic and tell people not to do that stuff, it's like people are going to do it. And for me, like I did it. I was a D-Gen. I lost a bunch of money. I leveled up. And so and then I learned that you actually, you know, you need to be curious. You need to think long term. You need to use products. And that's how to really make money and change your life in crypto. And I think there's companies out there that their business is tokens.

And they're trying to make as much money as possible, you know, selling tokens to retail. And they invest a lot of marketing dollars in doing that. And it becomes too part of the discussion. So that's all. It's like, you know, token. and it's like an insider game that also can bring in new people, but then most new people end up losing money from it and having to learn and level up. And so I hope that, you know, we can get past that and start talking about useful products. That's all. Okay. So let's talk

about that for Limitless. Like what's your plan here? And it can involve your token and your TGE, but like generally, how are you thinking about how to make this project a success? One thing I want to add to, by the way, is like, I don't want to be shilling this product or token like too hard. Like, you know, let's talk truthful about it. But like the reality is 99% of people that come on this show are just shilling their narrative. And it's like, it's tiring. Like, and it's people that have made a ton of money too. I don't know why they keep doing it.

It's like there's something soulless about it. it to me. And I think if you're someone watching this, it's like, buy Bitcoin, buy some eth. Most people, they spend way too much time and energy trying to find the next big thing, and they end up losing all their money. So put 90% in Bitcoin and Eith and then use products. And if you want to try limitless, use limitless. I wouldn't even advise anyone to buy limitless, you know, right away, unless you really use and understand and love it. the product. I think that's that's kind of just the reality. I don't know, MCJ. Like you're looking for like when it comes to that mercenary versus missionary

customer, you're, you're saying that you are looking for the missionary customer. Yeah. I mean, look, long term, we want to make this thing, you know, one of the most impactful trading products for people, right? And if people buy into that and believe the long term vision than by the token. But the problem is 99% of people that are jumping into tokens, they don't believe in anything. It's like believe in something. It can be this kind of stupid saying that people use that some people that say it don't even, there's a project out there called believe that actually believes in nothing. So it's like you need to be, it will be skeptical of the people that are saying things blatantly and be skeptical of me too.

But I think what I'm really saying is like believe in the mission of limitless, right, which is bringing more truth to the world, on chain transparency through prediction markets. And if you buy into that, then, you know, use the product and maybe getirdropped some tokens and maybe even buy some tokens. But like I don't want to be shilling any token to any like young person watching this. I just think we need to move past that as an industry. Okay, CJ. So answer the question.

I asked about how you plan to make Limitless a success, whether or not you plan to use the token, you can mention any strategy. Yeah. Well, I mean, fundamentally, I believe that all markets will move on chain. And of course, the kind of markets that we are most excited about right now is prediction markets. And we see huge potential. I believe we can onboard millions of net new customers into the space through prediction markets. And that's what Limitless is focused on.

especially right now in global markets and making it, you know, super easy for people to get onboarded and start trading like in just a couple of tabs. Well, so, so basically your focus is like just get people interested in this product and like more like a product market fits type of strategy. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Well, so I know. The fact that you even have to ask that question, I mean, isn't that what we're trying to do?

We're not trying to just shill narratives and tokens to people, right? We're trying to get people to use products. And the token can be rocket fuel on a product that's successful. And we want a team to be aligned with users. So we want to create tokens to give ownership of the product to users. But it's like there's just we're not trying to. And we will, one of the interesting things about limitless, okay, Polymarket, of course, is the, is the pioneer and the giant. And again, if you, if people watching want to look at a founder to like to model yourself after really, I think it's Shane, right?

Because Shane is someone that has willed this thing to one of the biggest things in crypto. And he, he plays the game his own way. He's just a real person. Okay. And so, but he's in turn and, you know, there may be a token there in the future as well, but I think one of the different things about limitless is, well, there's many different things, but one is we're kind of, you know, giving token ownership to users earlier, right? And so, you know, I think it's, it's product first, but the token is a part of it, but we don't want to be, you know, aggressively shilling this token.

to anyone that, you know, that that's listening. Yeah, I mean, like, listening to you guys talk, it sort of reminds me of how, you know, back in the day when Fred Erson was like writing blog posts about how like an ICO was sort of the way, the, like a solution to the cold start problem for any kind of network, right? That like, it would allow you to attract users early, which is like an issue that a lot of networks have. But then it almost feels like you're saying like it's swung too far to the other end where people only care just about the token and they don't care about the project. They just want

to make money quickly and they're not like focused on the long term. So like in this day and age, when you know you have things that have swung too far to the other end, like how do you think about kind of how to use this in a way that doesn't create additional problems for yourself? Well, and CJ can elaborate on this, but one thing, you know, in 2017, you remember, Laura, you know, ICOs went crazy and we had, you know, these teams raising way too much money and it was all vaporware. They didn't have any real products. I think, you know, we've seen good token launches, things like Uniswap, which raised, you know, venture capital, had an amazing product. And then, you know, air dropped that. token to users and, you know, that worked pretty well. I think one thing about limitless is we just invested in a round and people that care about limitless, not VCs, but just like users, people that are interested in the product got in on the same terms that we did. Okay. And that was through Kydo. And CJ can tell you more about that.

But again, to me, it's about getting users and people that care involved and aligned. Because, you know, the problem, air drops are great too, but the problem when you have $100 million VC rounds plus anirdrop, you can get a misalignment between like team and investors and users. And so I think, you know, doing something like we did here where it's a much smaller, round. It's not really for fundraising. It, you know, CJ could have raised a lot more from private investors, but it's more to get users that are aligned and that are missionary, not mercenary, right? Like, I think the more we can think about how to use tokens, but make it more missionary, that's a good thing for the space. For sure. Yeah, it's like skin in the game driving like acquisition and activation for

the product, but also like, like giving people the opportunity to have skin in the gam and like owning like co-owning the product and the network is a very powerful thing. And if that is your like intention and your goal, then, you know, I don't think if they want finance listing is going to move you much closer to that. But if your goal is to, you know, generate a bunch of exit liquidity and dump on on those people, you know, on their one, then sure, it will, it will work out very well. It all depends actually what your goals are and how you're actually approaching things and also in what kind of time frames you're thinking, right? And so yeah, I think with limitless, there's huge opportunity to kind of, you know, have like an army of token holders who love

the product and use the product every day. And this kind of, you know, puts fuel on the fire and supercharges the whole ecosystem and community. Okay. And tell us about the Kido investment thing that you did? What was that? Yeah, it was like basically just community sale that users who love the product and they got priority allocation based on actually how much they used the product could, you know, as Nick said, invest at the same terms of other investors. I think, sorry, I think the terms

were maybe even a little bit better for the community with the best thing and all of that, but the allocation was kept like very small, you know, not to create a lot of cell pressure. And yeah, it was mostly just to give this like opportunity like to the community so that they can like have skin again from very early days and like build and grow this thing with us. Okay. And I heard you talking on bankless about how you think that it's better to do price discovery on chain. So talk a little bit about that. Like how do you think about how to, you know, create that with limitless? So, yeah, I mean, like market makers are another, you know, a set of factors that if you don't actually know what you're doing in terms of like liquid markets, this is another kind of banana skin or I would say like a kind of really, you know, dangerous time in a network's life cycle is actually the deals that they make with market makers. But you don't necessarily need market makers to have on-chain token launch and price discovery

because of a lot of innovation that was made there. And so I think it's also better for the long-term sustainability and health of the network not to have, you know, like loan options and a lot of supply manipulation and price suppression from the market maker side, but actually to have a much more. organic kind of price discovery on chain. And I think that's a model that Limelis is going to set like a very good example with. And I believe that many others will follow. Okay. And Nick, I wanted to ask you because obviously you have watched the rise of polymarket from day one. And, you know, as you mentioned, like Shane really, he just willed it into existence.

So talk a little bit about like what you learn from watching that, like, you know, how you think about how to get these projects off the ground and like what kind of takeaways, you know, you feel limitless should should use for, for its own strategy? I mean, it's inspiring to me, honestly. Like, and you can see, um, the, the human response to Shane's success, too. Like, I think, I think it could have ripple effect. And it maybe it already has. Like, I think, you know, for CJ, it's, it's inspiring, right? Like, Shane is like a real human who is not who's playing the game like his own way and people can tell that right you can see it's not bots it's not um it's just you know a human response so um the main thing

takeaways or is like be yourself don't play the game that everyone thinks you need to play like do it your way and if you have belief in yourself and belief in the mission um you can do amazing things. And it's, it's pretty cool, right? It's awesome to see. I think it's, and it's great for, you know, I'm obviously an investor, so I'm excited about it from that perspective. But I mean, I'm excited about it for crypto broadly because I think we need more of that. And again, back to the token, it's like, there's no token. Shane, there's really, Shane was just focused on building this thing in real life. and making a real life impact.

He wasn't focused on, you know, crypto Twitter. He wasn't focused on launching a token and getting, you know, getting it hyped. He did it from the ground up his way. And it's, I think it's just starting too. Like I think, you know, Polymarket can be one of the biggest, the biggest company ever to come out of crypto, I think. And obviously Shane did kind of hint that there would be this Polytoken. coming up, can you talk it all about what that would be used for?

Or, yeah, I don't want to talk out of turn and talk too much about it. But look, anyone paying attention can tell that Shane gets it, right? Like, he understands the power of giving ownership of the product to users. And I think that's the main thing. I think all the, you know, another thing is that to date, okay, in crypto, you've either gone to Coinbase route of being a public company or the Uniswap route of, you know, being kind of an on-chain token project. And there is the opportunity for Polymarket to do both, right? there's the potential for a decentralized oracle type token and a massively valuable company. And again, that's just potential.

I'm not saying that's exactly what will happen. But, you know, it's possible. And people are definitely excited about Polly. Okay. All right. Well, so we've covered a lot of topics. The only last bit of like news that we didn't touch on was the fact that now Coinbase is saying that it's going to, or sorry, that it has put BNB on its roadmap for all this days. What did you make of that?

CJ? I think it's great. I think that this is how we all win when we help each other and collaborate. And I would love to see more base projects on Binance. And I would love to see more finance projects on base. yeah very heavy to see this news all right yeah we'll have to see like um if they actually do it and yeah anyway interesting that's what it what coinbase will do it coinbase does it's in the history of crypto coinbase does what it says right so they'll definitely do it all right well thank you both

so much for coming on on change and um yeah we'll have to see how everything goes in and see how the limitless launch goes what do you do you know when your tg can you announce that when that will happen? I would turn on post notifications because it's imminent. Okay, okay. All right. Some alpha right there, you guys. Okay, thanks everyone for joining and we'll catch you all later.

Welcome to this week's crypto recap. Let's begin. Binance unveils relief plan after flash crash and token de pegs. Binance has launched a sweeping compensation effort after a flash crash last week, caused several major tokens, including USDE, BNSOL and WB-Eath to lose their pegs and triggered widespread liquidations across the market. The exchange said it has already paid $283 million to affected Binance Earn users and rolled out a $400 million quote,

Together initiative to help traders recover from losses tied to forced liquidations. The plan includes up to $300 million for users who lost over 30% of their portfolios, along with a $100 million loan fund for institutions, participants. Quote, when we fall short, we take responsibility. There are no excuses or justifications, finance co-founder Yi He said. Separately, BNB chain launched a $45 million quote, reload airdrop to reimburse 160,000 meme coin traders impacted by the crash. Analysts cited internal Oracle issues and liquidity strains as factors that intensified the DPEGs. DOJ seizes 15,000. billion dollars in Bitcoin from global, quote, pig-butchering scam network. The U.S. Department of Justice

has seized approximately $15 billion worth of Bitcoin tied to a massive, quote, pig-butchering fraud ring operating out of Cambodia, marking the largest cryptocurrency forfeiture in the department's history. Federal prosecutors charged 38-year-old Chenji, also known as Vincent, with wire fraud and money-laundering conspiracy for allegedly overseeing the scheme through his conglomerate. Prince Holding Group. The company is accused of running forced labor scam compounds that trafficked victims and coerced them into executing crypto investment frauds that targeted users worldwide. Quote, Prince Group's investment scams have caused billions of dollars in losses and untold misery to victims around the world, said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Joseph Nacella. The Treasury Department

simultaneously designated the Prince Group as a transnational criminal organization and and sanctioned more than 100 individuals and entities linked to Z. The defendant remains at large, while the seized Bitcoin, totaling 127,271 BTC, is now in U.S. government custody. BlackRock, City, and Global Banks accelerate push into tokenized finance. Major financial institutions are deepening their move into digital assets, with BlackRock leading a new wave of blockchain adoption across Wall Street. CEO Larry Fink revealed that the firm is developing its own tokenization technology to convert traditional assets like ETFs and real estate into blockchain-based tokens.

Quote, we need to be tokenizing all assets, especially those with multiple levels of intermediaries, Fink said, describing the effort as key to reducing costs and expanding access to capital markets. BlackRock already manages the world's largest Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs worth $93 billion and $17 billion respectively, and operates its $2.8 billion tokenized biddle fund through securitize. Meanwhile, Citibank plans to launch a crypto custody service in 26, and J.P. Morgan is preparing to roll out crypto trading operations. In a parallel initiative, a consortium of major banks, including Goldman Sachs, City, and Bank of America, is exploring a stable coin-like digital money-backed one-to-one by Fiat reserves, marking a coordinated effort to integrate blockchain

into global payment systems. Bankman Fried claims arrest was meant to block his testimony on crypto bill. Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has resurfaced on social media, alleging that his 2022 arrest was politically motivated and timed to prevent him from testifying before Congress on a major cryptocurrency bill. Posting through a friend on the social platform getter, Bankman Freed accused the Biden administration's regulators of targeting him for political reasons. Quote,

They had me arrested weeks before the crypto bill I was working on was set for a vote, and the night before I was set to testify before Congress, he wrote. The Post also claimed that then-SEC chair, Gary Gensler, quote, conveniently lost, end quote, communications Republicans had requested around the time of his arrest. The former exchange founder who was serving a 25-year prison sentence for fraud and misappropriation of funds has been increasingly vocal ahead of his November 3rd appeal hearing. Critics argue his renewed activity is part of a broader campaign to seek clemency from President Trump. Bankman Fried has not publicly responded to those claims.

Nobel Peace Prize betting surge prompts. Investigation into possible leak. Norwegian officials are investigating whether confidential information about this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner was leaked after a spike in online bets predicted the outcome hours before the official announcement. Data from the crypto-based prediction platform, Polly Market, showed that wagers on Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Karina Machado surged shortly after midnight in Norway, ahead of her selection as the 2025 Laureate. One trader, using the handle Dirty Cup, reportedly bet $70,000 on Machado and earned about $30,000 in profit, while three accounts collectively gained around $90,000 from similar bets.

Quote, We take this very seriously, said Christian Bern. Hartvekin, Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute. Quote, it seems we have been prey to a criminal actor who wants to earn money on our information. Officials said they are investigating whether anyone, quote, managed to steal information, end quote, from the secretive selection process. Hyperliquid activates upgrade to enable decentralized perpetual trading. Decentralized exchange. Hyperliquid has activated its latest upgrade, HIP3, aiming to decentralize the

perpetual futures market. The new system allows qualified deployers to launch their own perpetual dexes on HyperCore by staking 500,000 hype tokens. According to project administrators, quote, HIP3 will be enabled during this network upgrade. There is no immediate change for users, end quote, but deployers can begin launching new markets, quote, once ready. The proposal known as Hyper Liquid Improvement Proposal 3 integrates with Hyper EVM to support smart contracts and governance, while introducing safeguards like validator slashing and open interest limits to maintain market stability. Celsius wins $300 million settlement from Tether in bankruptcy case. Celsius Network has secured a $299.5 million settlement from stable coin issuer tether, ending a

year-long legal battle over the liquidation of Bitcoin collateral during the lender's 22 collapse. The dispute centered on 39,542 BTC that Tether allegedly liquidated before a required 10-hour notice period expired, a move Celsius claimed worsened its insolvency. Tether maintained the actions were contractually justified, arguing Celsius had failed to meet margin calls. The settlement, about 7% of Celsius's original $4.3 billion claim, was approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, and confirmed by the blockchain recovery investment consortium, which manages Celsius's estate. Quote, Tether is pleased to have reached a settlement of all issues related to the Celsius

bankruptcy, said Tether CEO Paulo Ardoino. Fun bits, Paxos mints, all the money, then deletes it. In a move that briefly made PayPal the richest company in the universe, Paxos accidentally minted $300 trillion worth of PayPal's stable coin, PYUSD, that's trillion, with a T. The glitch, caused by a misplaced decimal, turned what was supposed to be a $300,000 transfer into the digital equivalent of printing all the world's money. And then some. Quote, Paxos just minted the entirety of global debt, quipped analytics firm Arkham, as traders collectively spit out their coffee.

The company quickly burned the excess tokens, assuring everyone, quote, No funds lost, just our dignity. It's not Paxos' first fat finger fumble. Back in 2023, they paid $500,000 in fees for a $2,000 Bitcoin transaction. Some lessons, it seems, cost a fortune. These guys took the idea of the trillion dollar coin a little too literally. Unchained is produced by Laura Shin with help from Matt Pilchard, Juan Oranovich, Margaret Curia and Pam Majumdar. The weekly recap was written by Juan Aranovich and edited by Stephen Erlich.

Thanks for listening.