Binance Life reaches a new all-time high, but the Meme craze is already a thing of the past

Original｜Odaily (@OdailyChina)

Author｜Wenser (@wenser 2010 )

Amid the market's sharp downturn, Binance Life (BANANA) has continued to hit new all-time highs. However, this price surge has not sparked much discussion in the crypto market. On one hand, it suggests that most people no longer hold or pay attention to this meme coin, whose market cap once exceeded $880 million. On the other hand, a slightly cruel yet unavoidable truth may be that the liquidity-strapped crypto market is gradually becoming a stage for a solo performance by whales. This is a tragedy not only for the meme coin sector but for the entire crypto market.

Three Surges of Binance Life Reflect Waning Meme Coin Hype

Looking back, Binance Life has experienced at least three major surge waves.

3 Market Cap Peaks of Binance Life: $500M, $700M, Nearly $900M

Last October, after Binance co-founder He Yi replied with the popular meme phrase "I wish you a Binance Life" on X, the identically named meme coin quickly stood out from the Chinese meme coin craze. Its market cap soared to $500 million, granting many early participants over 1000x returns. Over 100,000 wallet addresses traded it, and 70% of traders were in profit, directly fueling the BSC ecosystem meme boom.

In April this year, after roughly two months of accumulation, the whale behind Binance Life began its performance again. Coinciding with CZ's new book release on April 8, its market cap surged from under $100 million, breaking $530 million by April 18. In less than half a month, its price rebounded approximately 6x. Behind this, addresses suspected of controlling Binance Life increased their holdings to 147 million tokens, accounting for 14.67% of the total supply.

The most recent surge began on June 1. On that day, an address spent $5 million to buy 8.1 million Binance Life tokens at an average price of $0.61, increasing its holdings to 0.81% and entering the top 20 holders. Hours later, Binance Life's market cap briefly exceeded $700 million. Subsequently, more addresses joined the accumulation, pushing its market cap to over $880 million on June 7, a new all-time high. Unlike before, this was not an overall rebound in the meme coin sector, but a "solo whale show."

The "Whale Show" Behind Binance Life: A "20x Pump in 2 Months" Strategy

According to on-chain analyst Ember's monitoring, the whale behind Binance Life's violent "20x surge in 2 months" is highly likely to be Garrett Jin, the "October 11 insider whale" from last year. Last year, he exchanged tens of thousands of BTC for over 900,000 ETH. In February this year, his long position liquidation losses on Hyperliquid once reached $230 million. Specific evidence includes:

• Since February, a cluster of addresses has accumulated 288 million Binance Life tokens (worth ~$237 million) via Binance and on-chain purchases, accounting for 28.8% of the total supply. Including tokens on CEXs, this address cluster likely controls a large proportion of Binance Life, enabling its price to surge 20x from $0.04 to $0.85.
• The most compelling evidence is the deposit addresses. Multiple addresses that transferred large amounts of Binance Life tokens from Binance previously shared a Binance deposit address with Garrett Jin six months ago. Moreover, wallet addresses that recently bought large quantities of Binance Life on-chain shared a Bybit deposit address with Garrett Jin in the last five days.

As of now, this address cluster has bought 61.09 million Binance Life tokens in the past week, worth $42.77 million, at an average price of ~$0.7.

Relevant wallet addresses are as follows:

• 0x82C0DA65f3bE5fd4EE102337A5c560E2ae52ebD1
• 0xad946798685b3443eb3795df466b028abf907aaf
• 0x115552c3BE04dE5b031A1ffd3cC881A9107a069a
• 0xE60c0b900CdfE57FB1E1eA690708e120d91fDb22
• 0xB7C987EAd50DE301b4B3CB9db7c24091F2E1D2bb
• 0x3E3A47c5Fd611D515A27E123fD3a447F47aC2780

Two recent anecdotes about Garrett Jin are also worth mentioning:

• First, he recently engaged in a heated debate with "White-Haired Stock Guru" Serenity over the A-share robot stock "Greenland Harmonic", arguing that the price was at a high and not a good entry point. However, after Serenity's call, the stock surged 20% that day, hitting the daily limit, and surged another 20%+ at today's open, hitting the limit again.
• Second, last week, ZEC's price halved due to a potential inflation vulnerability. Garrett Jin subsequently opened a 3x leveraged short position on ZEC. As ZEC's price rebounded above $400, he was forced to close the short at a loss. Combined with his 5x leveraged BTC long position, his overall floating loss currently stands at $17.925 million.

In the volatile market, whales can sometimes just be bigger retail investors. In the current crypto market, perhaps US stocks and prediction markets are a more suitable choice for most people than the meme coin sector, where whales manipulate prices at will.

Finally, trading data shows that Binance Life's buy volume is remarkably poor. As crypto KOL Danny pointed out, the disparity between Binance Life's price and trading volume is stark. Clearly, "fewer people are biting the bait thrown by the whale."

Whether we admit it or not, judging by the current market hotspots, community activity, and liquidity performance, the meme coin frenzy on Solana, Base, and BSC ecosystems has become a thing of the past.