CZ mass unfollowing: Is the absurd "follow business" completely over?

Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher

On November 10th, a comparison chart of X follower counts ignited discussions in the crypto community. Binance founder Zhao Changpeng (CZ) unfollowed over 300 accounts from his X account in less than two months. This number far exceeds his usual maintenance, and is seen as a precise cleanup, revealing a hidden yet once highly active gray industry chain: accounts followed by CZ, which were publicly traded for tens of thousands of dollars.

Image source: X user @_FORAB

According to data platform RootData, on November 8-9, CZ unfollowed a batch of accounts, including active projects like BakerySwap and ReachMe on the BNB Chain. CZ initially responded that he was cleaning up inactive accounts, then later publicly stated, “Do not buy accounts I follow. If I find they are being sold, I will unfollow immediately.” Community members also reported that during the bull market, the highest transaction price for a single CZ-followed account reached $80,000, with many cases around $20,000 or a few thousand dollars.

It is worth noting that Oracle is a typical example of buying accounts to generate traffic and then running away with the money. Reportedly, on October 10, 2025, the Oracle project team disappeared with funds, and the account ceased operation. Community investigations suggest that Oracle likely acquired accounts through “buying accounts” (originally old accounts in CZ’s follow list). After the purchase, the new owners rebranded, changed profile pictures, issued tokens, and used the residual halo to inflate prices. Four Meme later clarified that they were not partners, and the project eventually ran away.

On the surface, this appears to be a trivial account buying and selling drama, but it actually exposes deeper issues such as industry attention distortion and extreme marketing tactics by project teams. On one hand, small projects find it difficult to gain exposure through legitimate channels, leading to extreme choices like spending tens of thousands of dollars to buy a “CZ-followed” account, rebrand it, and harvest traffic—much more cost-effective than months of product development or community building.

On the other hand, this phenomenon reflects systemic distortion of industry attention, with a lack of effective evaluation mechanisms, turning traffic into hard currency. Retail investors tend to treat celebrity activities as endorsements, and project teams compete not on code quality, on-chain data, or long-term planning, but on who can more quickly seize hot topics.

The editor also pointed out in the article “What happened to those following CZ?” that so-called signal calls are just sparks, and community hype adds fuel, igniting the market. This indicates that the market itself relies on hot topics to maintain attention and liquidity. Whether it’s public signal calls or “invisible endorsements” in the follow list, both can serve as short-term FOMO drivers under an immature evaluation system.

CZ’s recent cleanup, in a sense, serves as a wake-up call for the industry: only when project exposure no longer depends on individual or platform preferences will project teams return to focusing on their products, and retail investors learn to evaluate value through data.