Original author: Bright, Foresight News
Since returning from California, CZ has been busy.
It has been 170 days since his comeback. In nearly half a year, CZ has posted a total of 363 tweets. Although he has stopped serving as Binance CEO since November 2023, his enthusiasm for posting, attending events and even trying new things is higher than when he was at the helm of Binance.
Recently, Binance announced that it had received a $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi investment institution MGX. The cloth on the head meme MUBARAK was born, and its market value rose to $157 million with CZs frequent interactions. The fancy trick of 1 tweet and 1 BNB to rotate the BNB Chain meme appeared on CZ, who always talked about BUIDL, which was even more controversial.
This makes people wonder - after unloading the nominal burden of the head of the worlds largest exchange, is CZ reconstructing the industrys influence network with a freer attitude?
After being released from prison, the former richest Chinese person immediately resumed his usual technology evangelist persona, clearly stating that he would devote more time and money to charity (and education) in the future, and continue to focus on blockchain/decentralized technology, AI and biotechnology. However, in a market environment where VC narratives are generally sluggish, CZ did not stick to the BUIDL argument, but became a qualified BNB community leader amid the popularity of Meme and the ridicule of netizens.
Return to the Cryptocurrency Circle: From DeSci Charger to Meme Master
The first big move after CZs return was to call for a wave of orders for DeSci in the long-dormant technology/track. The layout of DeSci and Biotech, which is more VC-oriented, is more like a portrayal of the real paradigm of blockchain.
CZ attended the DeSci conference in Bangkok with Vitalik in November 2024, which instantly made the originally niche DeSci (decentralized science) track a hot spot for money and spotlight. Then, Binance Labs (now renamed Yzi Labs) officially announced its investment in the decentralized science financial layer project Bio protocol, which aims to achieve scientific research data rights confirmation, transparent allocation of experimental funds and commercialization of results through blockchain technology.
Today, Yzi Labs has added a description of investing in Biotech on its official website and Twitter profile. Four.meme, the most popular meme launch platform on Bnb Chain, will also provide the DeSci tag when the token is created.
The popularity of DeSci has attracted the attention of a large number of researchers. After Defi attracted traditional financial practitioners and NFT attracted artists to join Web3, scientists of all sizes may also rush in to bring new narratives and new growth to Web3.
In addition to CZ being optimistic about investments in the track, more often than not, he extends his influence to new things in the market in the name of experimentation.
Take Meme coin as an example. CZ openly stated that Meme coin has no actual value at the beginning, then admitted Meme coin in an interview, then went down and watched Degens fight for the name of their dog Broccoli, then posted a post mocking that TST test coins should pay Binance Logo fees, then disclosed the donation address to set off the Meme donation market, then forwarded the celebrity coin issued on Bnb chain for Ronaldinho, and finally Abu Dhabi invested in Binance-derived MUBARAK a few days ago. It can be said that it is CZs busy figure who has created every BNB Chains popular meme with a large market value.
What is talked about most is that CZs operation in the MUBARAK incident is textbook-level: on March 13, after Binance announced that it had received investment from Abu Dhabi MGX, CZ personally retweeted the Middle Eastern-style tweet of the Binance Chinese account and captioned mubarak; the next day he retweeted the MUBARAK=CZ meme created by the community; on the 15th, he released a dynamic with the image of Mubarak, causing the token price to surge 150% in a single day; on the 16th, he purchased 1 BNB of MUBARAK and TST on the chain, directly pushing the market value of MUBARAK to exceed US$100 million.
This three-hit mode of tweet interaction-community creation-on-chain operation directly transforms CZs personal influence into strong market momentum. Data shows that it took only 4 days from the concept proposal to the market value of MUBARAK exceeding 100 million, with the highest daily trading volume reaching 88.1 million US dollars, but the depth of the liquidity pool was less than 5 million US dollars, which fully reflects the attention is capital feature of the Meme economy led by CZ. This operation mode is in sharp contrast to the Broccoli name dispute incident, when CZ triggered a short-lived craze of 20 million US dollars in market value by just watching the community quarrel. Today, BNB Chain Meme has evolved into a systematic traffic operation with CZ as the attention anchor.
Although CZ has basically distanced himself from these Meme tokens, his change in attitude towards Meme does show a change in his relationship with the community and even the entire crypto industry, and it teaches all top KOLs a vivid lesson on how to use the attention economy to maintain the heat of the ecosystem when the market is sluggish.
Entering education: The richest man’s social transformation practice
However, CZ still talked the most about his new venture, Giggle Academy. This open education platform is a strategic project in his transformation. On March 3, CZ posted a message One kid at a time, times 6000 now. to congratulate Giggle Academy for the breakthrough in the number of users.
Giggle Academy was launched on March 19, 2024. It uses blockchain technology to gamify new basic education such as mathematics, literature, science, physics, biology, finance, and even programming and AI, and reconstructs the learning certification system in a decentralized way such as NFT and on-chain badges.
Giggle Academy attempts to solve two major pain points: first, to improve learning retention rate through gamification design (platform data shows that the average daily learning time of users is 23% longer than that of traditional online courses), and second, to break the academic inflation dilemma - when the learning process is recorded in an unalterable way, talent assessment will focus more on actual ability rather than diploma packaging. In an interview, CZ emphasized that it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish. Education is a key tool to solve the problem of global inequality, and blockchain can provide a transparent and verifiable solution for this.
However, he also emphasized that Giggle Academy will not issue tokens and be fully funded by individuals, nor will it adopt the traditional Web3 education promotion [Learn to earn] model. This may cause many problems, he said. On March 14, CZ published a statement saying that it would launch a recommendation earning points mechanism, but not cryptocurrency. This anti-Web3 bubble design just highlights its pragmatism in promoting the implementation of technology. It can be seen that CZ aims to use blockchain technology to reconstruct not only the learning evaluation mechanism, but also the inclusive model of global education.
Crypto leaders: Finding the middle ground between industry and individuals
In just 170 days, CZ posted an average of 2.135 posts per day, a 37% increase from his tenure as CEO of Binance, and more than 60% of them involved industry trend analysis, project incubation progress, and personal investment philosophy. This high-frequency interaction is more of a sophisticated identity reshaping experiment than a leisurely retirement life - by diluting the label of Binance founder, CZ is constantly shifting his personal IP from exchange power holder to crypto ecosystem enabler.
Before going to jail, CZ, as an early crypto evangelist and the actual manager of the first centralized exchange, was subject to industry compliance and regulatory pressure. He even made it clear in 2023 that he would not invest in such projects (Meme). This stance is closely related to the compliance image of its centralized exchange - at that time, Binance was facing global regulatory pressure and needed to keep a distance from high-risk assets. Therefore, CZ will appear more as a builder, calling on people in the industry to BUIDL Web3 together. In fact, CZ once admitted in an interview that he had never used Defi. Coincidentally, CZ posted on X on February 23rd that it was his first time using DEX (decentralized exchange), which immediately caused an uproar.
However, when CZ was released from prison, Binance paid off the settlement fee with the US Department of Justice, and CZ was forced to leave the nominal Binance management, CZ, who can set the tone with one word, has objectively become the biggest KOL of BNB chain and even the entire Binance ecosystem, whether actively or not. Even when the BNB Meme market was booming, most peoples eyes fell directly on CZ, hoping that he could represent BNB to take over Sol and detonate the BNB Chain ecosystem. In fact, CZs efforts to respond to Memes and participate in the community have gradually transitioned from testing the waters to a systematic and comprehensive layout.
However, there is no doubt that, whether or not he serves as the CEO of Binance, CZ still finds it difficult to separate himself from the crypto empire he created. As the largest shareholder with 90% of the shares, he does not participate in daily decision-making, but major strategic adjustments still require the consensus of the board of directors; and as a founder, the markets over-interpretation of his remarks is more likely to trigger a chain reaction. It is often said in the currency circle that profits and losses come from the same source, and CZs influence and resistance also come from his most successful product - Binance.
