Inside Korean Black Market of Crypto Exchange Listings: $5 Million Price Tag

According to several local projects, brokers are demanding millions of dollars to be paid out for unconditional listings.

On Aug. 11, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, told its investors and users that the exchange does not list "Shitcoins" even for 4,000 BTC and every cryptocurrency must go through a rigorous verification process established by Binance.

"We don't list shitcoins even if they pay 400 or 4,000 BTC. ETH/NEO/XRP/EOS/XMR/LTC/more 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!".

All complaints about listing fee come from projects we did not list, ie, did not charge.

Whether or not Binance has been charging upward of 400 BTC for a listing, Zhao and the Binance team have emphasized that every listing is verified and approved by the exchange-and even for a sum of $25 million, the exchange does not list cryptocurrencies that are not up to par with other projects in the community.

In South Korea and the market's medium-sized cryptocurrency exchanges, brokers have been offering $2 million to $5 million listing offers to newly created blockchain projects desperately looking for liquidity on public exchanges, according to local media outlets.

If a blockchain project pays a broker anywhere from $2 million to $5 million, despite the state of the project, an exchange listing is supposedly guaranteed.

"We've met with top three cryptocurrency exchanges in the world and they've all clarified that there is no listing fees involved in the process of listing digital assets. Prior to speaking to large exchanges, we were told that we need at least $5 million to be listed on a widely utilized cryptocurrency exchange."

The statements of three blockchain project CEOs that spoke to Etnews last week demonstrated legitimacy in the claims of exchanges like Binance-in that cryptocurrency exchanges do not actively seek large digital asset listing fees.

For blockchain projects, rather than investing millions of dollars on brokers running a fraud and illegal services, a better method would be to develop a token actually worth listing to increase cryptocurrency market legitimacy.