Binance Founder CZ Reveals His Dog’s Name and Meme Coin Traders Go Nuts

Binance co-founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, known as “CZ,” unveiled the name of his dog on Thursday—generating chaos for meme coin fans who sought to either create or buy into the most successful token inspired by the pup.

The former Binance boss and still-prominent Crypto Twitter personality first revealed that he had a dog in an exchange on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday, and began contemplating out loud whether he should share the name and a picture as eager traders flooded his replies. 

“How does this work? I share my dog’s name and picture, and then people create meme coins?” Zhao posted. “How do you know which one is ‘official’? Or does that even matter?” 

After weighing the responses, CZ ultimately agreed to post a picture of the dog early Thursday giving users a three-hour heads up before the post. Those three hours led to speculation about the dog’s name, sending multiple “CZ’s Dog” tokens—like CLEO, BROWNIE, and PERRY—into multi-million dollar market caps on BNB Chain as users tried to front-run the post. 

Those tokens swiftly declined when Zhao revealed that his dog, an 18-month-old Belgian Malinois, was actually named Broccoli. 

“I wanted a name that starts with ‘B’ and has some green in it, so I named him Broccoli,” said CZ. “It also has a blocky sound, as in ‘blockiichain.’ Can’t get away from crypto.” 

The official reveal kick-started a new and different frenzy, this time focused on the creation of dozens of Broccoli-related tokens that were deployed via BNB Chain’s popular meme coin launchpad Four.meme—a platform similar to Solana’s Pump.fun. 

Demand was so large that Four.meme was knocked offline according to widespread reports on X. Four.meme did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment. 

As the dust settled, the market seemingly came to terms with a winning token, sending one version of BROCCOLI to more than a $400 million market cap momentarily. However, it has settled to around $74 million at the time of writing. 

In just two hours since its creation the token has generated more than $220 million in volume and produced at least 11 wallets with more than $1 million profits, according to DEXScreener.

Broccoli tokens also sprouted up on other blockchains, like Solana, where users similarly sifted through dozens of similar tokens to try to identify a likely winner. The top Solana coin currently has a $5 million market cap on more than $56 million in trading volume.

Some Broccoli tokens are flying more than others, but according to CZ, there will be no “official” token from his point of view.

“I am just posting a photo of my dog and his name, as some of you requested,” he posted. “Let the best meme coin in the community win.”

Interest for tokens on BNB Chain is on the rise of late, with total trading volumes on the network up more than 168% in the last seven days according to CoinGecko. In that time, a “test” (TST) meme coin discovered as part of a tutorial video was shared by CZ and ultimately listed on Binance, sending it briefly above a $500 million market cap.

Edited by Andrew Hayward