CZ

From memecoin.wiki, the free memecoin encyclopedia

CZ
Image: X profile avatar of @cz_binance
handle	@cz_binance
role	Binance founder
known for	the BNB Chain trench era, Broccoli, MarsCoin lore, the 2025 pardon

CZ is Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, whose dog Broccoli, stray tweets, and even his statue spawned entire meme coin frenzies on BNB Chain, and who was pardoned by Trump in October 2025.

Contents

1 The BNB Chain trench era
2 Broccoli
3 MarsCoin and the statue
4 The pardon
5 Significance
6 References

Changpeng Zhao, universally known as CZ, is the founder of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, which he led until pleading guilty in November 2023 to a US charge over inadequate money laundering controls, serving four months in 2024. His meme coin footprint is a study in involuntary influence: without ever issuing a token, CZ became the primary price oracle of the BNB Chain trenches.

The BNB Chain trench era

After his release, CZ reemerged as BNB Chain's informal patron during the chain's 2025 push to compete with Solana for meme coin flow, a roadmap that explicitly emphasized memecoins. His every post became launch material. Crypto Briefing reported his warning that anyone aping into coins created from his random tweets was "almost guaranteed to lose money," a disclaimer the market treated as a buy signal.

Broccoli

In February 2025 CZ revealed that his dog, a Belgian Malinois acquired in Dubai, was named Broccoli, while stating flatly that he was not issuing a coin. Bitcoinist reported that within 12 hours of him posting photos, Broccoli tokens on BNB Chain had a combined capitalization above 200 million dollars, with rival Broccolis fighting for the canonical ticker. The episode became the defining example of a coin meta built entirely on a name drop, with the named party abstaining.

MarsCoin and the statue

The lore extended to accidents. CZ suggested the name MarsCoin in a tweet, and Bitcoin.com reported that when he later burned spam tokens during routine wallet cleanup, speculators read the burns as intent and pumped an unofficial MarsCoin clone from around 40,000 dollars to 30 million before it collapsed; CZ eventually converted the watched wallet into a burn address and moved his holdings toward his Giggle Academy charity. In October 2025 a token tied to a statue of CZ surged around 27,000 percent and then crashed 99 percent after he disowned it with "don't buy the meme," per CoinDesk, having done 1.2 billion dollars of volume.

The pardon

On October 23, 2025, President Trump pardoned CZ, erasing the 2023 conviction, as reported by Fortune and Time. BNB and BNB Chain meme coins rallied on the news. Critics cited by The Intercept questioned the pardon's connection to Binance's dealings with Trump family crypto ventures; no wrongdoing regarding the pardon has been established, and CZ and the White House defended it as correcting an overreach.

Significance

CZ's chapter in the trenches proves the attention thesis holds even for a founder actively refusing to play: the market does not require consent, only a feed to front run.

References

Category: People