Exchanges Under Fire: Binance and Coinbase Accused of Hidden Listing Fees

• Binance and Coinbase face accusations of charging hidden fees for token listings, despite their claims of a 0-fee policy.
• Moonrock Capital’s CEO and other industry figures allege exorbitant listing fees, questioning the exchanges’ transparency.
• Binance’s co-founder Yi He defended the exchange, asserting transparency and denouncing the accusations as FUD.

A recent series of tweets shed light on serious accusations against some of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges in the world – Binance and Coinbase. Both exchanges claim that they don’t charge fees for listing tokens on the platform. However, recent posts from well-known figures in the market questioned the legitimacy of this 0-fee policy. 

The issue started last week with Moonrock Capital CEO Simon Dedic accusing Binance of requesting a fee for listing a token on the platform. The CEX allegedly demanded a fee of 15% of the total market supply in order to do so. Dedic claims that this expense would cost over $50 million – and that this kind of request would make it impossible for up-and-coming projects to enter the world’s largest crypto exchange.

Co-founder and CEO of Coinbase – Brian Armstrong was quick to reply to Simon Dedic’s post, claiming that his exchange doesn’t charge asset listings. However, multiple-crypto-startup founder Andre Conje disregarded Armstrong’s claims – accusing Coinbase of charging hundreds of millions of dollars for token listings on the platform.

Interestingly, Justin Sun corroborated Andre Conje’s claims after saying that while Binance didn’t charge him anything – Coinbase allegedly requested from him a 500 million TRX (~$80million) payment and a subsequent $250 million deposit in BTC to Coinbase custody.

Binance Co-Founder Cries FUD

In response to the accusations, Binance co-founder Yi He took to Twitter to defend the exchange’s practices. She emphasized that Binance’s screening process for listing projects is stringent and not influenced by the amount of money or tokens offered. She encouraged people to do their own research (#DYOR), highlighting that Binance lists token distribution details to ensure transparency.

She elaborated on Binance’s airdrop rules, stating that while their launchpool and other listings are transparent, not all projects willing to offer airdrops will be listed. Yi He clarified that projects must meet Binance’s criteria, regardless of their token offerings.

Yi He addressed the accusations directly, asserting that FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) is a constant in the crypto world, but it ultimately strengthens the community. She called out the use of gossip to gain traffic and highlighted the importance of understanding how the world works to avoid being swayed by rumors.