Binance Asks for $300,000 and 3% of Coin Supply to List DigiByte, Says Founder

Leading crypto exchange, Binance has come under fire from members of the DigiByte Coin community following a revelation by the project’s founder, Jared Tate, that he had tried to get the cryptocurrency listed on the popular trading venue.

Jared revealed Friday, Sept 20 that he had spoken with the Binance team the previous week regarding a potential listing of their coin on the exchange operator’s platform.

The result of the meeting according to the DigiByte Coin founder was the Binance team demanding a $300,000 listing fee and 3% of all the coins supply, as a way to provide insurance for Binance customers against “blockchain hacks & defects.” 

Did a video call with the ”Binance” team a few weeks ago. They wanted $300,000 and 3% of all DGB for ”insurance for their customers against blockchain hacks & defects” to list $DGB. Told them that is not possible with a truly decentralized #blockchain like #DigiByte.

— Jared Tate (@jaredctate) September 20, 2019

Jared then claimed he told the Binance team that such a massive package is not possible since it would endanger the project’s status as a truly decentralized blockchain. 

According to the founder, they “have zero funds & zero ability as a decentralized project to meet such a request,” a reply that prompted Binance to say that they would ‘get back’ to the DigiByte team.

Normal Listing Requirements?

While the listing requirements that Binance had purportedly asked to allow their users to trade DigiByte Coin is not entirely outrageous, the request catches the eye for a number of reasons.

However, what is perhaps the most troubling according to our findings is that 3% of DigiByte’s coin circulating supply means that the leading cryptocurrency exchange would now be in possession of 368,694,424.47 DGB coins approximately worth $2,949,555 at the time of writing.

As Jared pointed out in another tweet, handing Binance control over that value of DGB as insurance for a project that has been in existence since 2014, will put the exchange in pole position to perhaps manipulate the coin’s price at will.

Thank you. And this is exactly my point. With 3% of all DGB and 300k they can manipulate DigiByte at will.

— Jared Tate (@jaredctate) September 20, 2019

The founder thus argued that he wouldn’t risk their decentralized nature for an opportunity that could later return to hunt DigiByte users. With the coin’s market cap just below $100 million, literally little monetary effort would be needed if Binance chose the go down the path dreaded by the DigitByte founder.

Meanwhile, whether Binance would list DigiByte thereafter is a question that only time will answer, even though the project’s case once again calls into question the integrity of centralized cryptocurrency exchanges and their operational standards.