CZ: Aster’s Privacy Edge Over Hyperliquid in Memecoin Boom

The recent surge of Chinese memecoins on BNB Chain began as an unplanned social media moment during the Mid-Autumn Festival. In his October 10 interview with CounterParty TV, former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao revealed that his simple “Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, post your best memes” post unexpectedly triggered a wave of community creativity. The organic response included moon-themed content and Chinese-language tickers, most notably “Zhao Chang’e” – a clever wordplay combining Zhao’s name with Chang’e, the female deity from Chinese mythology.

Zhao emphasized the spontaneous nature of this development, stating: “It wasn’t planned. It just slowly evolved into that. Everything I tweet, they turn into a meme. At some point I said, screw that. I’m just going to tweet freely.” This casual approach has yielded significant results, with five BNB Chain memes reaching market capitalizations between $100 million and $500 million in recent weeks, attracting attention from Solana traders seeking new opportunities.

The former Binance CEO contrasted BNB Chain’s trading culture with Solana’s, noting that BNB traders “tend to be more holders. They don’t go up and down the next day.” This holder-focused mentality stems from BNB Chain’s utility background, creating a different dynamic from Solana’s faster-paced meme culture that has dominated recent market cycles.

Zhao directly addressed perceptions that BNB operates as a closed ecosystem, arguing instead that BNB Chain maintains greater openness than Solana’s infrastructure. “Binance lists tokens from every blockchain, even meme coins from every blockchain,” he noted, highlighting that Trust Wallet supports multiple chains including BNB Chain and Solana, while Phantom doesn’t support BNB Chain and Radium operates exclusively on Solana.

The former CEO provided crucial context for Solana’s meme coin focus, linking it directly to regulatory pressures during the Biden administration. “If you launch a real project with a utility token, you’re going to get a lawsuit from SEC,” Zhao explained. This regulatory environment has pushed builders toward meme coins that explicitly claim no utility, with developers declaring “there’s no value, there’s no utilities, just for fun” to avoid securities violations.

Zhao’s investment in privacy-focused perpetual DEX Aster stems from two decades of trading experience, revealing what he considers a fundamental requirement for professional traders: order privacy. He argued that Hyperliquid’s transparent on-chain order book creates what he described as a “fatal flaw” that Wall Street participants cannot accept. “Every single trader on Wall Street I talked to do not want other people to see their orders in real time,” Zhao stated.

The former Binance CEO explained the critical vulnerability created by transparent order books: “If you know exactly how another person is going to trade, there’s always one way to trade against them for them to lose money.” This absence of privacy leaves traders exposed to individuals who can reverse-engineer their trading algorithms and exploit them systematically, a risk professional traders cannot tolerate.

Zhao’s public discussion of the privacy issue in June triggered immediate industry response, with 30 project pitches arriving the same day. Aster’s implementation of hidden orders proved compelling enough to attract investment from Binance Labs alongside other privacy DEX projects. While acknowledging that Hyperliquid could potentially add privacy features, Zhao noted that exchanges compete on multiple dimensions beyond single functionalities, emphasizing that how an exchange protects users and handles mistakes ultimately determines success.

Looking toward the industry’s evolution, Zhao predicted that perpetual DEXs will eventually rival centralized exchange volumes within one market cycle. He outlined a natural migration pattern where new users initially onboard through centralized platforms with familiar interfaces, then transition to DEXs for broader token selection and earlier access to emerging opportunities.

According to Zhao’s timeframe: “In 20, 30, 50 years out, everything will be on-chain. But in the interim, if there’s a big rush of traditional users, CEX will get better. Afterwards it will slowly slip into DEXes.” This gradual transition acknowledges the current role of centralized exchanges in onboarding traditional finance participants while positioning decentralized platforms as the inevitable destination for sophisticated traders seeking privacy, broader access, and structural advantages.