BNB Meme Coin Tied to Statue of Changpeng Zhao Rises After CZ Says 'Don't Buy'

A meme coin tied to a golden statue of Changpeng "CZ" Zhao surged early on Wednesday after the Binance founder encouraged people via social media to not buy the token.

The meme coin, CZSTATUE—which was issued on BNB Chain earlier this week—jumped to a market capitalization of $4 million, from $3 million, an hour after Zhao said on X that its creator “probably just wanted to make a quick buck off an interaction with me.”

Trading grew as the morning progressed. The meme coin recently had a market capitalization of $1.1 million after briefly spiking to $6.8 million. Over the past day, it had generated $20 million worth of trading volume, according to crypto data provider DEXTools.

On X, Zhao said that he wanted to appreciate the 14-foot tall statue that was shown in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday for a handful of hours. However, he suspected its creators were trying to use his image, and recent presidential pardon, to enrich themselves.

“This is something I don’t appreciate,” Zhao said. “Don’t buy the meme.”

Despite reports that mistook unaffiliated meme coins for the BNB-based asset backed by the statue’s creators, the official meme coin’s price had increased 30% over the past day.

One of the statue’s creators, who goes by Nick Zee, told Decrypt that the confusion was disappointing, accusing others of trying to capitalize on his work with tokens of their own.

“They’re like hyenas,” he said. “I used to love the space, but I just came to the conclusion that nobody's genuine, nobody's honest. Everyone’s here for one thing: to make money off you.” 

The smart contract address for the official meme coin ends in “4444,” a reference to the four-fingered gesture that Zhao popularized in 2023 as shorthand for ignoring fear, uncertainty and doubt (aka “FUD”) amid heightened regulatory scrutiny.

Zee told Decrypt earlier this week that an anonymous collective of donors—who put up $50,000 to fund the initiative—planned to gift the statue to Zhao or auction it off to benefit the Binance founder’s educational nonprofit. That’s still the plan, Zee said on Wednesday.

“Our goal was to get CZ to acknowledge our presence,” Zee said, referring to Zhao by his initials. “We intend to give the statue to CZ, but he doesn't seem to quite like it a lot.”

On X, Zhao said he would “never accept the statue,” indicating that only an “egomaniac would have a statue of himself in his house.”

The initiative is unaffiliated with a group of people who set up a statue of U.S. President Donald Trump holding a Bitcoin near the U.S. Capitol in September. Those individuals also issued a meme coin tied to the project.

Meme coins trade on little more than vibes, making them susceptible to price swings based on social media activity or people’s attention. In recent years, tech CEO Elon Musk’s affection for Dogecoin and Trump’s knowledge of his meme coin have been high-profile examples.

The president issued Zhao a pardon last week, who pleaded guilty to a criminal charge related to anti-money laundering violations in 2023, as part of a $4.3 billion settlement between him, the exchange, and U.S. law officials. Zhao served four months in prison last year.

The pardon proved controversial, given Binance’s ties to World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto firm. The firm’s project’s USD1 stablecoin was tapped for a $2 billion investment in Binance from Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund MGX earlier this year.

On Monday, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) backed a resolution condemning Trump’s pardon of Zhao, arguing that it's a symptom of corruption.