What is the most expensive thing in the 21st century? The traffic anxiety of exchanges

Author: Zuoye

Having no money left, I can only keep your attention.

At 6 p.m., I end the stream, change into OK’s clothes, and after Binance’s big liquidation, I go drink a few bottles of beer.

In the Meme counter’s crazy Perp marketplace, I earn some rebates by KYC-ing with mom.

The 2026 New Year’s blockbuster witnesses the collapse of the exchange’s skyscraper, unlike previous explosive events such as major liquidations or needle injections triggering public opinion, now the public no longer focuses on exchanges, reflected in Binance Square and OKX Planet’s inability to attract new users.

When even the inspiring stories of beautiful female dealers go unnoticed, exchanges have to come out shouting, “Look at the kids, it’s free to watch and we pay you!”

This article commemorates the first anniversary of Chuanbao’s ascension, a presidential-level stunt that gives us full emotional value.

Lie down and wait for the money

If you don’t erupt in silence, you will perish in silence.

In 2025, the exchange did nothing wrong, embracing Perp DEX actively on-chain, actively complying and fighting back against rebates when mom was hospitalized. Just a few days ago, Binance Wallet still hosted Meme trading competitions and responded to OKX Wallet’s smart account system.

In 2026, if the exchange fails to develop any product well, retail investors’ attention affects capital flow. BNB Chain’s 2 million monthly active users is just a numbers game, like Twitter’s million-dollar contest, where success stories quickly lose their warmth in a day.

The wealth effect is changing spokespeople; when people care about a $1000 creation reward, they are destined to ignore stories of $1000x wealth.

All these facts emphasize one thing: exchanges need people, not shiny VIPs, but scruffy contract dogs.

When you place an order and open a contract, you are a VIP; when you get liquidated, you are just a roadside stray.

A rough estimate: an outsider user’s lifespan after entering the circle is about 6 months; a crypto KOL’s account with trading signals lasts about 18 months. Regardless of the route taken, it’s fundamentally a fight for retail investors’ attention.

Unfortunately, exchanges still understand attention in the pre-AI era, focusing on KOLs. In the Vibe Coding era, the value of code and media is decreasing exponentially. Not only are product implementations becoming worthless, even creativity is valueless. Engineering trial-and-error can combine everything into A/B tests.

Communication ability now has commercial value, but recommendation algorithms are not gods. Elon Musk’s 100 million exposure repost is a liability for X; only content tamed by algorithms is the new cash flow, capable of increasing platform daily active users and attracting advertisers.

In short, poetry cannot reduce Li Bai’s value; algorithms cannot iterate infinitely.

But exchanges still treat retail investors as appendages of KOLs and media. Sir, the times have changed; the era where retail investors happen for themselves has arrived.

Analyzing the role of content creators, they are always stuck between exchanges and retail investors, massaging the trading psychology of retail, fulfilling KPIs for the exchange’s marketing department, and collectively slaughtering and exploiting retail investors.

This does not mean retail investors have no awakening moments. The remaining “enlightened chives” in each cycle will remember the past deeply, becoming beacons in the dark forest, evolving from fake competitions to spitting contests. No one can record the crypto world, but the crypto world grows memories.

Retail investors are not unwilling to spend money; they realize their attention is the most valuable. The logic is simple: domestic social media like Xiaohongshu are frantically banning crypto content in favor of digital renminbi; Twitter drastically reduces crypto weight to reshape user experience. Agencies that only刷刷刷 (scroll and click) have already gone astray with Kaito.

Image caption: CZ responds
Image source: @cz_binance

Under the strange internal and external pressures, CZ still comforts himself by saying “I am a small shareholder of Twitter.” This $500 million story is still used to comfort retail investors, creating a false impression that Binance is very powerful, but in reality, Binance Square’s user acquisition is already crazy.

If Binance does it, then OKX will do it too. If the industry leader does it, then Bitget and Gate will follow. If KOLs don’t settle in, they will directly pull content and pretend the ecosystem is thriving, then report to the boss Leader and succeed in grabbing people.

But all of this is fake. Retail investors’ attention to KOLs, media, and exchanges is an act of unlimited mercy. KOLs and media need this to maintain traffic for survival; exchanges need retail investors’ heads to sustain decent momentum. The park is a gold-selling pit, and the platform’s price is worth thousands.

Image caption: Rebates end, live streaming begins
Image source: @binancezh

Outside of Twitter, TikTok is where exchanges crave public domain traffic. They are also the earliest to awaken. Countless comment sections emphasize that viewers are not passive numbers but living souls.

• Cute cat video comments: users know that view counts matter for cat videos, deciding tonight’s cat food quality and quantity; they know to主动躺下当猫粮 (actively lie down to become cat food);
• Domineering egg total comments: users appreciate the difficulty of meticulously crafting eggs, deciding whether their account success or failure over years depends on their effort; they know to主动躺下当母鸡 (actively lie down to become hens);
• Lonely and solitary comments: users proactively like and promote live streams for good deeds, creating a positive cycle of “no matter the trace, no matter the heart”; they know to主动躺下当米面 (actively lie down to become rice and flour).

Under intense “net sense” education, everyone is a netizen. Everyone participates in creating gods and killing gods—our era’s arena. Everyone knows their attention can be aggregated into money by algorithms. Everyone knows that their focus on a token is real gold and silver.

Only in the crypto industry do exchanges always treat retail investors as passive fools, even trying to tier-price KOLs based on followers. This will never happen again. The awakening of retail investors will fundamentally change the industry’s operation mode.

Unproductive Behavior Psychoanalysis

The madness of exchanges is not new, but their anxiety over “content” is a first.

However, this anxiety only leaves a craving for emotional value, which cannot be truly converted into trading value. The current problem is that retail investors realize the value of their attention; KOLs need to cater to Twitter’s algorithm changes, but exchanges still play straight.

After Musk announced the Feed algorithm as scheduled, “sense of alive-ness” became the most valuable move. Mechanical interactions and matrices are limited in flow in the short term. Now, reviewers have become tireless Grok Transformers.

Image caption: X interaction weight
Data source: @elonmusk

Then, exchanges still bid based on KOL followers for OKX Planet’s promotion ranking. Honestly, Xu Mingxing should do proper onboarding training for new employees. Simple employee benefits cannot attract retail trading. OKX Wallet is ten thousand times better than Binance Wallet, but retail investors still haven’t surpassed Binance.

If they cannot increase wealth effects, at least they should reduce flaunting wealth.

Retail investors live so hard, yet exchange bosses live comfortably. This battle is already over before it begins. OK can’t catch Binance; the Square can’t surpass Twitter. All that’s left is the uninhabited planet singing “错错错” (wrong, wrong, wrong).

Binance anxious, OKX struggling, Musk playing both sides.

If exchanges cannot provide emotional value to retail investors, then retail investors will not give trading value to exchanges. KOLs are just one link in transmitting value, thinking as retail investors do, and rushing as CEXs do.

This process is very simple: everyone knows that KOLs making videos and writing articles can exchange traffic for real money. The more people watch and comment, the longer they stay, the stronger the creator’s profitability for the platform, and thus KOLs can offer users a better reading experience.

Then, exchanges follow suit, demanding KOLs sell traffic to themselves and dump retail investors into the market. This is the process of the market’s microstructure collapsing.

Binance claims 300 million users, even more than Twitter’s 2021 monetized monthly active users (mDAU) by 100 million. But this is meaningless; it’s clear that this traffic anxiety can be quantified.

• Twitter’s monthly active users should be declining; the daily time spent on X/Twitter has dropped from 34 minutes to 28 minutes. Nikita Bier said X users read no more than 30 posts daily, confirming no significant growth.
• The US and Japan are Twitter’s largest user groups, about 100 million in the US, and about 20 million in Hong Kong + Singapore. Considering mainland users cannot access directly and need proxies, the highest number of Chinese Twitter crypto users is estimated in the millions.

So why do Binance and OKX want incremental growth from millions of groups, and then convert to their platforms with exponential decay? The conclusion is: tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers can support Binance’s total of 300 million users.

In interpersonal theory, the six degrees of separation describe the difficulty of information spread. The information network can transmit to at most 6 people, with a three-degree influence index, meaning each person can influence “friends of friends.” Assuming a KOL has 20 friends, their maximum influence is 20×20×20=8,000 people. This is not the limit of spread but the limit of influence.

Unfortunately, Dunbar’s number still restricts influence: 150 people is the reachable contact circle. Because crypto users are highly interconnected, you can see similar KOLs and exchange operators in each group. Trust me, the supporters in each group are roughly the same crowd.

Image caption: You are my joy hidden in the breeze across thousands of miles

Under repeated cross-influence, OKX Planet can at most attract third-tier Web3 KOLs that Binance Square can’t reach. Mother of Dragons at least still goes to BNB Chain.

Remember the lifecycle of retail investors and KOLs? At least the NFT groups I joined are now completely inactive.

Conclusion

Humility is a life attitude; ascension is a life choice.

Broadcast to the entire universe: our attention to exchanges is a gift to them, especially during industry hardships. This is not a way for exchanges to exploit users.

Exchanges now need to consider one thing: whether to monetize the last bits of attention, letting flashy employees report to bosses and shareholders, or to serve the gods with a service attitude, taking care of retail investors’ survival, doing good content, and letting traffic grow naturally.