The world’s largest BNB treasury company has crashed 95% from its high last year and is blaming the family office of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) for a “secret side agreement.”
On Tuesday, it issued a press release demanding that CZ’s YZi Labs disclose a confidentiality provision between his family office and 10X Capital Asset Management LLC, the lead party in the company’s July 2025 PIPE transaction that coincided with its 52-week and multi-year high of $82.88 per share.
Shares of CEA Industries, which changed Nasdaq ticker symbols from VAPE to BNC — an attempt to pivot the company’s brand to a BNB Network Company — now trade at $3.88 after losing 95% of their value over the past seven months.
Before becoming a BNB treasury company during the height of the digital asset treasury (DAT) mania in the summer of 2025, CEA Industries was operating Canadian vape retailers.
That business model, as well as several business models and pivots including a previous ticker change from CEAD to VAPE, failed to reverse a multi-year decline in its common stock from a $873 peak in 2018 to under $8 by the time of its acquisition of 33 Canadian vape locations.
By July 2025, the company had yet again began looking for a new trend.
It found a suitor in Cantor Fitzgerald, founded by US Commerce Secretary and Jeffrey Epstein’s former neighbor Howard Lutnick, who acted as the lead financial advisor to 10X Capital and sole placement agent to CEA Industries.
Read more: Binance demands the Wall Street Journal remove ‘damaging’ article
Another Cantor Fitzgerald-advised treasury flop
Cantor Fitzgerald helped raise capital for other DATs like Twenty One, Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company, and Nakamoto.
In fact, the same 10X Capital that led CEA Industries’ $500 million PIPE also served as financial advisor to Nakamoto, which has declined 99% in value from its May 2025 peak. Twenty One is down 89% since May, and Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company is down 37% since July.
Despite its financial devastation, CEA Industries’ 95% decline is somewhat unremarkable among DATs.
10X Capital acted as CEA Industries’ BNB asset manager “with the support of YZi Labs.” According to CEA Industries, that support is potentially problematic, and it wants to force disclosure of how, exactly, CZ’s family office “supported” 10X Capital’s management of BNB.
10X Capital’s Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Russell Read became CIO of CEA Industries shortly after the PIPE closed.
By September, the company had relegated him to a non-executive position and by the end of the year, he’d resigned entirely.
Almost everyone lost in BNB treasury debut
Some of the biggest crypto funds invested in CEA Industries via the PIPE, including Pantera Capital, GSR, Arrington Capital, Borderless, Blockchain.com, Arche Capital, Hypersphere Capital, Kenetic, and the founders of BitFury.
There are two sides to every story.
For its part, YZi Labs has contested CEA Industries’ characterization of the “secret side agreement” as recently as this week.
YZi Labs wants CEA Industries to retract what it calls false claims about that agreement, and it’s requested directors Hans Thomas and David Namdar recuse themselves from asset management discussions.
It also wants to solicit stockholder written consents for board changes.
Amid the infighting, CEA’s common stock has fallen 41% year to date, 67% over the past 12 months, 95% from its 52-week high, and 98% over the past five years.
Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Source: https://protos.com/largest-bnb-treasury-crashes-95-blames-cz-family-office/