The founder of Binance, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, recently ignited a flurry of activity in the crypto community after sharing a picture of his dog, Broccoli, on X.com. The post led to the creation of several new memecoins under the ticker “BROCCOLI” on the Binance Chain.
Although Zhao did not launch a memecoin himself, he expressed amusement at the community’s rapid response and hinted at the possibility of engaging with some of the emerging tokens on the BNB Chain.
The hype started when a user on X.com asked Zhao if he had a pet. He confirmed owning a Belgian Malinois and teased the idea of a memecoin before posting a picture of his dog at 8 PM Dubai time on Thursday. This revelation quickly spurred the creation of multiple memecoins named after his pet.
This event followed another recent memecoin surge when the BNB Chain team developed Test (TST), initially meant as an instructional example. After being mentioned by Zhao on X.com and later listed on Binance, TST skyrocketed by over 2,000%, peaking at $0.56 before stabilizing around $0.15.
In November, Zhao had commented on the growing trend of memecoins, stating that while the phenomenon was becoming increasingly eccentric, he was not personally against memes.
According to The Block, PancakeSwap recently surpassed Uniswap to become the leading decentralized exchange (DEX) in trading volume. Over the past week, PancakeSwap’s trading volume exceeded $21 billion, as per DeFiLlama data. A significant portion of this activity was fueled by speculative trading around TST and the excitement triggered by Zhao’s pet-related posts.
The surge in PancakeSwap’s trading volume coincided with a notable rally in the BNB token, which rose 9% in the past 24 hours and over 21.5% in the last week. Additionally, PancakeSwap’s native token, CAKE, experienced substantial growth, surging 40% in a single day and doubling in value over the past week.
Harrison Seletsky, Business Development Director at SPACE ID, attributed the increased activity on PancakeSwap to the hype surrounding TST and Broccoli, CZ’s dog. He suggested that this trend could bring more liquidity and new users to the BNB Chain while engaging its existing community.
Seletsky highlighted the unexpected popularity of TST as an example of market dynamics and the BNB Chain community’s enthusiasm for creative and sometimes humorous initiatives.
