The biggest $CATE catalyst might not be another viral post.
It might be the beginning of the exchange wars.
Think about what has happened so far.
$CATE has built 100K+ holders, massive volume and one of the strongest retail communities in the market while access is still relatively limited.
A huge part of the onboarding is happening through @fomo and @Pumpfun
Now imagine what happens if @binance decides to list $CATE.
Not saying it will happen. But after the recent soft references, it’s a scenario worth thinking through.
Because a Binance listing wouldn’t just give $CATE another place to trade.
It could completely change the distribution game.
Right now, exchanges are competing for the same thing:
Users.
And $CATE has shown them something extremely valuable.
It can bring NEW users into crypto.
That’s the important part of the thesis.
If tens of thousands of people are buying $CATE as one of their first coins, an exchange isn’t simply listing another memecoin.
It potentially gets access to an onboarding machine.
Now imagine Binance moves first.
Suddenly every other major exchange has a decision to make.
Ignore $CATE and watch users create Binance accounts to buy it?
Or list it themselves and compete for that volume and those new customers?
That’s where things could get reflexive.
Binance lists.
Another exchange follows.
Then another.
Every listing increases accessibility.
Accessibility creates new buyers.
New buyers create volume.
Volume makes $CATE more attractive to exchanges that still haven’t listed it.
And suddenly the competition changes from:
“Should we list $CATE?”
to:
“How aggressively can we market $CATE to capture these users?”
We’ve seen versions of this movie before.
Think back to $SHIB.
Once the major exchanges realized the scale of retail demand, listing the token wasn’t only about collecting trading fees.
SHIB became customer acquisition.
Exchanges marketed it because millions of retail users wanted exposure.
Every new listing made buying easier.
Every new listing created headlines.
Every headline onboarded another wave.
That accessibility helped turn SHIB from an internet meme into a globally traded asset.
$CATE is obviously nowhere near that scale today.
But that’s exactly why the possibility is interesting.
The community and onboarding came BEFORE the major exchange distribution.
Imagine adding the distribution afterward.
100K+ holders working for their bags.
Normies onboarding normies.
PFPs everywhere.
IRL marketing.
Hundreds of thousands of community theses.
And then suddenly Binance, OKX, Bybit, Coinbase or others have an incentive to compete for the same users.
That’s when the game changes.
Because the next phase wouldn’t only be the $CATE community marketing $CATE.
It could become exchanges marketing $CATE because they want the customers behind it.
That is a completely different level of firepower.
The first major exchange to seriously embrace $CATE could potentially trigger a race.
And once that race starts, every exchange sitting on the sidelines has to ask:
How many users are we willing to lose to competitors?
This is why I keep coming back to retail onboarding as the core thesis.
Price is downstream.
Listings are downstream.
Volume is downstream.
The real asset is attention + distribution + people.
$CATE has already shown it can attract people without major CEX infrastructure.
If the infrastructure eventually comes to the people instead?
That’s where things could get very interesting.
The community built the engine.
A major exchange listing could pour gasoline on it.
And if one moves, I wouldn’t be surprised if the others suddenly start paying very close attention.
The exchange wars haven’t started yet.
But if they do, you probably don’t want to discover the thesis after everyone has listed it.
Hey @binance , @cz_binance , @coinbase , @brian_armstrong, @cobie, @RobinhoodApp@RobinhoodCrypto and @vladtenev - as the bull run comes back, I want you guys to take a look at what’s happening with $CATE on Solana.
CATE was born just 4 weeks ago. No team supply. No market maker. No massive insider allocation. Just a community that has quickly proven CATE is becoming retail’s coin of choice this cycle.
The thesis is intentionally simple:
This is the cat cycle. CATE will flip DOGE.
That’s it. Normies understand it immediately, and the numbers are starting to show what happens when you give retail a meme they actually understand.
In 4 weeks:
• 114K total holders
• 77K holders on Fomo alone
• 11K+ people in Telegram
• Thousands regularly joining Spaces
• CATE spreading across TikTok and other social platforms
• Thousands of physical CATE posters being put up around the world
And according to Fomo as of yesterday:
• 146K users have bought cate coin on the app at least once
• 38K bought CATE as their FIRST coin
• $173M in total CATE volume
• 24K unique users have posted a CATE thesis, totaling 500K+ thesis posts
That 38K number is the one I think matters most.
These aren’t just existing crypto traders rotating from coin to coin. CATE is bringing new people into crypto.
Here’s the volume from the last 5 days:
8/24: $37,773,450
8/23: $88,625,183
8/22: $37,545,379
8/21: $31,671,071
8/20: $12,579,449
I know all of you are focused on growing your own platforms, ecosystems and chains, so it would be easy to ignore a community forming around a coin on Solana.
But I think that misses the bigger opportunity.
The next wave of retail is coming. Right now, thousands of them are being onboarded through CATE and going to platforms like @fomo and @Pumpfun to buy it.
Why shouldn’t they also be going to Binance, Coinbase and Robinhood?
List CATE and suddenly a new user who came because they wanted to buy the funny yellow cat has an account on your platform. Maybe they buy CATE today. Tomorrow they look around and discover BTC, ETH, SOL, your ecosystem, and everything else you offer.
CATE isn’t asking exchanges to bring us users. We’re already bringing the users.
We’re 4 weeks in. The community is growing every single day, and I believe this is only the beginning.
Anywho, if you made it this far, I hope you see what I see.
And if you don’t, that’s okay.
I’ll check back in a week when Fomo has 150K+ CATE holders. 💛🐈
@binance YOU GUYS ARE MISSING OUT, LIST $CATE AND ATTRACT THOUSANDS OF NEW TRADERS, CATE PUMPS. WIN, WIN. THE PEOPLE WANT $CATE, GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT.
Dear @CIA@FBI my fomo user is frankdegods and i am a thief, i nuke peoples wallets because i am retarded, please come get me and put me away…
“sellers are running out of coins” - @frankdegods
THE CATESTEIN FILES HAVE BEEN RELEASED AND THEY’RE EVEN MORE BULLISH THAN I EXPECTED.
38K PEOPLE BOUGHT CATE AS THEIR FIRST COIN.
THE ONBOARDING COIN OF THIS CYCLE.
SO MUCH HIGHERRR 💛🐈
@PoorGoat_ - 146k users have bought on app at least once. 38K have bought CATE as their first coin.
- $173M total volume on CATE
- 24K unique users have posted a thesis (for a total of 500K+)
@bivlol@frankdegods did i blame frank for rigging it you retard? he made a thesis “sellers are running out of coins” and made it clear in the X space he wasn’t going to sell soon, he then later dumps 200k knowing his influence and follower count, i have entry at 13 million dumbass i’m still up. fag