Binance Grievance Record: Why did NFT Whale dingaling face CZ's "hit the nerve" but choose to remain silent?

On May 6, when CZ tweeted that the famous NFT Whale and boop.fun founder dingaling was “a former employee fired by Binance for rat trading” and “fake CRO,” the market felt confused amidst the shock of the gossip. Because, just about 6 hours before CZ posted this tweet, Binance Alpha had just announced the launch of the boop.fun platform token $BOOP and conducted an airdrop for users meeting the Alpha points criteria.

It seems that the matter has come to an end, yet it also feels like it hasn’t. After being “face-slammed” by CZ, dingaling did not respond to CZ’s ruthless tweet, nor did he change his Twitter bio. This can be seen as a form of “silent retaliation.”

Why did CZ do this? And why didn’t dingaling respond directly? Let’s begin by reviewing the identity mystery of dingaling to try to find possible answers to these questions.

Who is dingaling?

On April 8, 2021, @OwnTheMomentNFT posted a “missing person notice” on Twitter - Who is dingaling?

In just the first week of April 2021, dingaling spent about $350,000 on NBA Top Shot NFTs. He became famous for purchasing and collecting a large number of rare NBA Top Shot NFTs, and it can even be said that he might be one of the earliest famous NFT Whales.

This is a 4-year-old Reddit post, "Without whales like dingaling, NBA Top Shot is no different from the cards our parents collected and kept since childhood."

One of the reasons why dingaling is revered by many NFT players during the subsequent NFT bull market is precisely this. He is very generous when buying NFTs, and for NFTs with poor liquidity, dingaling’s purchases mean that many NFT players’ orders can be executed in an instant.

Soon, dingaling accepted a written interview with @OwnTheMomentNFT and revealed 2 personal pieces of information - I am a coin circle person and an Australian.

One and a half years later, the topic of “who’s dingaling” was officially exploded by a tweet from @NFTethics. At this time, dingaling already has more than 100 BAYC, 70 Azuki, and is the top bidder at the Azuki Gold Skateboard Auction with 309 ETH.

The conclusion of @NFTehics is that dingaling is an “absolute senior personnel of Binance” named Dinghua Xiao. In the early days, the Twitter account @DinghuaXiao existed and some tweets related to Binance can still be searched, showing interactions between Binance users and this account. In these interactions, the current Twitter handle of dingaling, @dingalingts, can even be seen.

If dingaling is indeed Dinghua Xiao, then he is not only an executive at Binance, but also a shareholder of the FTX joint venture entity West Realm Shires Inc, which was co-founded by CZ and SBF.

In 2024, in the relevant lawsuit of the FTX bankruptcy case, Dinghua Xiao, along with CZ and Samuel Wenjun Lim (林文俊, who was mentioned in the documents as the compliance officer of Binance from 2018 to 2022), became co-defendants. They are accused of participating in “fraudulent share buyback transactions” in 2021 and creating a run effect through false statements before the collapse of FTX, facing multiple civil compensation and restitution claims.

Although in the lawsuit documents, Dinghua Xiao worked at Binance and its several subsidiaries from 2017 to September 2019, the purchase of shares in West Realm Shires Inc occurred on February 28, 2020.

About an hour after the tweet from @NFTethics was posted, dingaling responded on Twitter. He stated that he is Australian and a former Binance employee, and accused @NFTethics of “unfounded and random guesswork in doxxing.”

In fact, half a month before the launch of @NFTethics, @maid_crypto mentioned the identity of dingaling, “founder of Pancake and LooksRare”, in a tweet.

Despite this, for a long time, dingaling’s background as a Binance employee was not known to most people. After he modified his Twitter profile and sparked discussion, even one of the largest NFT KOLs, @waleswoosh, stated that he was unaware of dingaling’s past experience with Binance.

The surge of CZ and the silence of dingaling

This might be the part where everyone feels confused—why, after everything has been given to Binance Alpha and the airdrop has been distributed, does CZ still say this dingaling? And why doesn’t dingaling retaliate like it did against @NFTethics three years ago?

CZ’s motives may stem from two aspects: one is the potential negative impact of dingaling’s actions on Binance’s compliance, and the other could be some personal matters he has with dingaling.

For a long time, it can’t be said that dingaling deliberately downplayed his previous background with Binance, but he has also almost never actively mentioned it. Shortly before the launch of boop.fun, he changed his Twitter bio to “Building boop.fun, former Binance CRO and PancakeSwap founder.”

As an NFT Whale, dingaling does not need the background of Binance, and this background may even have a negative impact. However, as the founder of boop.fun, this identity can help in marketing. You might ask, why was it not mentioned during the LooksRare period? Because LooksRare stated at that time that it was an anonymous team, while boop.fun is “real-name entrepreneurship.”

In terms of the private matters of both parties, CZ’s public statement is that “dingaling was expelled due to rat trading,” which seems to be a reason worth getting angry about—causing harm to the company. However, when looking through tweets in the English-speaking circle, we can see some interesting comments.

There are many stories between CZ and dingaling. I can only say that if CZ speaks ill of dingaling, I wouldn't be surprised because this isn't the first time dingaling has been tricked by CZ. Everyone knows what CZ did to the founders of PancakeSwap.

Theoretically speaking, CZ is right. Dingaling's position is to study leaders (the de facto CRO), and he has indeed been investigated and fined millions of dollars due to "rat trading." The situation with this "rat trading" is that dingaling bought a bunch of $CAKE himself, but requested a share of the profits from PancakeSwap, which angered CZ and Ted Lin (former Binance CGO).

Dingaling’s non-retaliation is because, as a project party, he needs Binance to make his project more successful.

In fact, he also retaliated; not changing his Twitter bio is a kind of silent retaliation.

Grievances and disputes can only be fully understood by the parties involved. I hope this article’s整理 of the “Grievance Jianghu Record” in the crypto world can provide all readers with a good experience of watching the drama.