The world’s largest BNB treasury firm has crashed 95% from its excessive final 12 months and is blaming the household workplace of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) for a “secret side agreement.”
On Tuesday, it issued a press launch demanding that CZ’s YZi Labs disclose a confidentiality provision between his household workplace and 10X Capital Asset Administration LLC, the lead occasion within the firm’s July 2025 PIPE transaction that coincided with its 52-week and multi-year excessive of $82.88 per share.
Shares of CEA Industries, which modified Nasdaq ticker symbols from VAPE to BNC — an try and pivot the corporate’s model to a BNB Community Firm — now commerce at $3.88 after dropping 95% of their worth over the previous seven months.
Earlier than changing into a BNB treasury firm through the peak of the digital asset treasury (DAT) mania in the summertime of 2025, CEA Industries was working Canadian vape retailers.
That enterprise mannequin, in addition to a number of enterprise fashions and pivots together with a earlier ticker change from CEAD to VAPE, did not reverse a multi-year decline in its frequent inventory from a $873 peak in 2018 to beneath $8 by the point of its acquisition of 33 Canadian vape areas.
By July 2025, the corporate had but once more started searching for a brand new pattern.
It discovered a suitor in Cantor Fitzgerald, based by US Commerce Secretary and Jeffrey Epstein’s former neighbor Howard Lutnick, who acted because the lead monetary advisor to 10X Capital and sole placement agent to CEA Industries.
One other Cantor Fitzgerald-advised treasury flop
Cantor Fitzgerald helped increase capital for different DATs like Twenty One, Bitcoin Customary Treasury Firm, and Nakamoto.
In truth, the identical 10X Capital that led CEA Industries’ $500 million PIPE additionally served as monetary advisor to Nakamoto, which has declined 99% in worth from its Might 2025 peak. Twenty One is down 89% since Might, and Bitcoin Customary Treasury Firm is down 37% since July.
Regardless of its monetary devastation, CEA Industries’ 95% decline is considerably unremarkable amongst DATs.
10X Capital acted as CEA Industries’ BNB asset supervisor “with the support of YZi Labs.” In line with CEA Industries, that assist is doubtlessly problematic, and it needs to pressure disclosure of how, precisely, CZ’s household workplace “supported” 10X Capital’s administration of BNB.
10X Capital’s Chief Funding Officer (CIO) Russell Learn turned CIO of CEA Industries shortly after the PIPE closed.
By September, the corporate had relegated him to a non-executive place and by the top of the 12 months, he’d resigned fully.
Virtually everybody misplaced in BNB treasury debut
Among the largest crypto funds invested in CEA Industries by way of the PIPE, together with Pantera Capital, GSR, Arrington Capital, Borderless, Blockchain.com, Arche Capital, Hypersphere Capital, Kenetic, and the founders of BitFury.
There are two sides to each story.
For its half, YZi Labs has contested CEA Industries’ characterization of the “secret side agreement” as not too long ago as this week.
YZi Labs needs CEA Industries to retract what it calls false claims about that settlement, and it’s requested administrators Hans Thomas and David Namdar recuse themselves from asset administration discussions.
It additionally needs to solicit stockholder written consents for board adjustments.
Amid the infighting, CEA’s frequent inventory has fallen 41% 12 months up to now, 67% over the previous 12 months, 95% from its 52-week excessive, and 98% over the previous 5 years.
