EVERY CYCLE NEEDS A VILLAIN. THIS TIME, THE CROWD PICKED CZ.
Not because he vanished.
Not because he stole funds.
But because he stayed standing while the market bled.
Let’s talk about the FUD surrounding Changpeng Zhao and why it says more about crypto than about him.
Crypto has a habit that never really changes.
When the market is green, we celebrate builders.
When the market turns red, we start hunting for faces to blame.
Right now, one name keeps resurfacing in every dip, every liquidation, every rumor: CZ.
Changpeng Zhao.
Not a protocol that failed.
Not on-chain data that exposed wrongdoing.
A man.
And that's because fear, once unleashed, needs a human anchor.
This article is not about defending CZ blindly.
It’s about understanding how FUD forms, spreads, and hardens into “truth” in crypto, using CZ as the case study.
The Anatomy of the Current FUD
The recent wave of suspicion around CZ didn’t begin with evidence.
It began with emotion.
Bitcoin dipped sharply.
Leverage wiped accounts.
Liquidations piled up.
And in that moment of collective shock, a familiar pattern emerged:
screenshots, clipped statements, speculative threads, and confident accusations.
Suddenly, CZ was being accused of:
secretly dumping Bitcoin,
orchestrating liquidations,
manipulating markets from behind the scenes,
and mishandling Binance’s SAFU fund.
None of these claims arrived with verifiable on-chain proof.
They arrived with certainty because certainty spreads faster than complexity.
Why the “Market Manipulation” Narrative Sticks
Markets are uncomfortable to explain honestly.
They are driven by leverage, reflexivity, liquidity gaps, macro conditions, and herd psychology.
Those forces don’t fit neatly into a tweet.
So the mind reaches for something simpler:
a single actor with power.
Binance is the largest centralized exchange.
CZ built it.
Therefore, the logic goes, Binance (or CZ) sold Bitcoin, triggered the fear, and caused the crash.
It’s the kind of claim that feels true when you’re hurt.
But step back.
An exchange doesn’t control price direction like a joystick.
It matches buyers and sellers.
The market is driven by users, leverage, and liquidity, not a single operator pressing a button.
Yes, whales move markets.
Yes, centralized platforms carry structural risk.
But there’s a huge difference between:
“centralized exchanges can amplify volatility,” and
“CZ deliberately triggered the crash.”
The first is a real conversation.
The second is often a story built to satisfy frustration.
But FUD prefers a villain you can name, not a system you must understand.
SAFU, Screenshots, and Suspicion
The SAFU fund became another flashpoint.
Once the “dumping” accusation spread, it evolved fast.
Now it wasn’t only about price.
It was about trust.
SAFU, Binance’s long-standing insurance fund, became the next suspense point in the narrative:
“Where is it?”
“Was it used?”
“Was it drained?”
“Is it real?”
The strange thing is how quickly questions became conclusions.
In healthy skepticism, people investigate.
In FUD, people accuse.
And SAFU became the perfect prop because it sits at the intersection of two powerful fears:
fear of hidden insolvency, and
fear that the exchange will “freeze you out” when it matters most.
The market didn’t need to know the truth.
It just needed to feel uncertain.
No single conclusive evidence surfaced.
Again, FUD does not require proof; it only requires repetition.
Once doubt takes root, even transparency is reinterpreted as misdirection.
Words Turned into Weapons
Another twist: CZ’s own words.
CZ’s past optimism didn’t help.
Earlier comments about a potential 2026 supercycle were pulled back into the light not as context, but as a weapon.
When the market got messy, and he expressed reduced confidence due to geopolitics and misinformation, it was framed as:
“He lied.”
“He’s backtracking.”
“He caused panic.”
But markets adjust to changing conditions all the time.
The idea that updating your outlook is “proof of guilt” is… odd.
Unless the goal was never to evaluate but to convict.
That earlier comment was quoted endlessly when the market turned volatile.
The narrative quickly became: he promised, then he failed.
Crypto is rarely patient with context.
Statements are frozen in time, then replayed under entirely different conditions. In crypto, nuance dies quickly.
From Criticism to Absurdity
It got messier.
At the peak of the FUD, the discourse crossed from skepticism into theatre.
Fake screenshots circulated.
Doctored prediction-market bets appeared.
Absurd claims that CZ “cancelled the supercycle,” as if the entire global liquidity cycle runs through a single person.
As if:
Global liquidity didn’t matter,
Wars and elections didn’t matter,
Interest rates didn’t matter,
ETFs and institutional flows didn’t matter.
Tariffs didn't matter.
Only one man.
At that point, it wasn’t even a critique anymore.
It was myth-making.
Why CZ Became the Target
The uncomfortable truth is this:
CZ is an easy symbol.
CZ is not some anonymous figure.
He is one of the most visible builders in crypto history.
He built big.
He built at extreme speed.
He scaled aggressively.
He fought regulators and eventually paid an enormous price.
He paid a historic fine.
He went to prison and came back.
In an industry that subconsciously expects disgraced figures to disappear, his continued presence unsettles people.
So the scrutiny never ends.
Not because he is uniquely powerful, but because he is uniquely available as a narrative anchor.
All these are what make him remain a symbol.
And symbols attract projection.
So every time something goes wrong in the market, his name becomes a gravity well for emotions that people don’t know where to place.
This Isn’t About Innocence or Guilt
CZ has acknowledged mistakes.
He stepped down as CEO.
He paid billions in penalties.
He served time.
That’s not nothing. Those are not the actions of someone avoiding consequences.
But the current FUD isn’t really about accountability.
The current wave of FUD doesn’t feel like a careful audit of wrongdoing. It feels like something else:
A market looking for a clear explanation in a messy reality. It’s about anxiety.
And when crypto can’t explain a fall, it creates a villain.
Until crypto matures past that reflex, there will always be another CZ.
Something is strange about the CZ backlash because it exposes crypto’s unresolved contradiction:
It says it hates centralization.
But it secretly wants centralized figures to worship or destroy.
It says “don’t trust, verify.”
But too many people skip verification when the story is juicy enough.
CZ might be flawed.
He might be controversial.
He might deserve scrutiny.
CZ is neither a saint nor a secret puppet master. He is a builder operating in a young, emotionally reactive market that oscillates between worship and blame.
But as long as fear moves faster than understanding, the loudest stories will rarely be the truest ones.
The way this narrative spread fast, confident, and often proof-light should bother anyone who cares about truth in this space.
Because today it’s CZ.
And tomorrow, when the next wave hits?
Crypto will pick someone else.
Same script.
Different name.
