Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao shared a photo of his dog, named Broccoli, on X.com, igniting a flurry of activity in the cryptocurrency community as numerous new memecoins with the ticker "BROCCOLI" were created.
Zhao, who did not launch a memecoin himself, expressed amusement at the rapid response and hinted at potentially interacting with some of the emerging memecoins on the BNB Chain.
The announcement of his dog's name and subsequent photo post followed a query from a user on X.com about whether Zhao had a pet dog. Zhao confirmed he owned a Belgian Malinois and teased the possibility of a memecoin before revealing the pet's photo at 8 p.m. Dubai time on Thursday. This led to the creation of several memecoins named after his dog.
This event comes shortly after the BNB Chain team developed Test (TST), a memecoin meant as a tutorial example, which unexpectedly surged over 2,000% in price following Zhao's mention on X.com and a Binance listing. The coin peaked at $0.56 before stabilizing around $0.15.
Previously, in November, Zhao had commented on the proliferation of memecoins, suggesting that the trend was becoming excessively eccentric, though he clarified he was not against memes themselves.
According to The Block, PancakeSwap has recently outperformed Uniswap, becoming the leading decentralized exchange (DEX) by trading volume. Over the past week, PancakeSwap's volume exceeded $21 billion, according to DeFiLlama data. This surge in activity has been partly attributed to the speculative trading around TST and the excitement generated by Zhao's pet-related posts.
The increase in trading volume on PancakeSwap has coincided with a significant rally in the BNB token, which has risen by 9% in the past 24 hours and by over 21.5% in the past week. PancakeSwap's native token, CAKE, has also experienced a dramatic increase, soaring 40% in one day and doubling in value over the past week.
Harrison Seletsky, SPACE ID director of business development, linked PancakeSwap's heightened activity to the TST memecoin and the buzz around Zhao's dog. He suggested that this trend could bring more liquidity and new users to the BNB Chain, while also engaging the existing community.
Seletsky highlighted the TST memecoin's unexpected popularity as an example of the market's dynamics and the BNB Chain community's eagerness for innovative and sometimes humorous initiatives.
This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.