TL;DR: According to Jared Tate, founder of the cryptocurrency project DigiByte, popular exchange Binance “wanted $300,000 and 3% of all DGB for ‘insurance for their customers against blockchain hacks & defects'” in order to list its token. Binance has been accused of such listing practices in the past, and at various points denied fees altogether or insisted list fees would be donated to charity.

Binance Wants $300,000 Plus 3% of All DGB to List DigiByte

“Told them that is not possible with a truly decentralized #blockchain like #DigiByte,” Tate continued. “After explaining in lengthy detail we have zero funds & zero ability as a decentralized project to meet such a request they told us they would ‘get back’ to us. Tired of everyone asking me when Binance or Coinbase. They are free to do as they wish.”

Binance CEO “CZ” fired back on another thread, “lol, interesting (in a fk’ed up way). I think he specifically does NOT want DGB listed on Binance. Not gonna waste any time on these types of guys. There are more interesting things to do in life. Moving on…” Evidently, he and Tate have some sort of history, though the Binance CEO did not deny Tate’s current accusations.

Tate later posted a quick video explainer, outlining his principal objections to listing fees, which he described as a form of “strongarming” projects like his. He recounted how, for the last five years, some members of the DigiByte community berated him for not moving faster to have the token listed in then-major altcoin exchanges — thus increasing DigiByte’s exposure and popularity, etc. Tate said more than a few times less scrupulous exchanges would simply disappear after listing DGB, taking users’ tokens with them.

We Don’t List Sh*tcoins

Cracks in the Tate/CZ relationship appeared last month when a self-described member of the DGBAT, or DigiByte Awareness Team, explained, “2 years ago #DigiByte won a listing poll on @binance #DGB were then asked for a fee. #DGB same as #Doge have not got the funds to pay for listing @jaredctate & @cz_binance clashed. 2 years later #Doge added, no fee no argument.”

The last public comment from Binance on listing fees appears to be a company blog post, claiming, “Binance will make a change to our listing fee policy. Starting immediately, and going forward, we will make all listing fees transparent and donate 100% of them to charity. Project teams will still propose the number they would like to provide for a ‘listing fee,’ or now more appropriately called a ‘donation.’ Binance will not dictate a number, nor is there a minimum required listing fee.”

During another supposed listing fee controversy around this same time in 2018, CZ was blunt. “We don’t list shitcoins even if they pay 400 or 4,000 BTC,” he stressed. Projects like Ethereum, Ripple, EOS, and Litecoin, he noted, were “listed with no fee. Question is not ‘how much does Binance charge to list?’ but ‘is my coin good enough?’ It’s not the fee, it’s your project! Focus on your own project!” Earlier this year, however, when asked about Binance DEX, CZ acknowledged, “There will be a listing fee on the DEX. I actually deliberately want to set that a little bit high, just so we reduce the number of spam or scam projects. And there’s also a voting process by the validators to be listed on the DEX. So there’s a fee, I think the fee will be probably close to $100K US, so we’ll see. But the fee is adjustable over time, it’s quite easy to change.”

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