Original Title: "Spending $500 Million, YZi Labs and CEA Bet on BNB Treasury with 140 Institutions"
Original Author: Ethan, Odaily Planet Daily
Following Bitcoin becoming a benchmark reserve asset for publicly listed companies, other mainstream cryptocurrencies are also attracting institutional attention. BNB, the ecological token under the world's largest exchange Binance, has recently achieved another significant breakthrough in its strategic reserve mechanism.
On the evening of July 28, CEA Industries Inc. (NASDAQ: VAPE), a publicly listed company in the U.S., announced in conjunction with 10 X Capital that it has completed a PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity) financing of up to $500 million, specifically aimed at establishing a crypto asset reserve treasury centered around BNB. The transaction structure also includes warrants of up to $750 million, making the potential total financing scale reach as high as $1.25 billion.
This collaboration is not without precedent. As early as July 10, YZi Labs first disclosed its support for 10 X Capital to establish a company called "The BNB Treasury Company," aimed at holding BNB in the secondary market and seeking to list on major exchanges in the U.S. Although the market's response at the time was tepid, industry insiders viewed it as a carefully designed "rehearsal."
According to the latest plan, CEA will officially launch its BNB treasury strategy: using the funds from this round of financing (combining cash and crypto assets) to build a position in BNB in the secondary market. The core idea is to leverage the compliance structure of a publicly listed company in the U.S. to provide regulated BNB exposure for institutional and retail investors. This design logically parallels the Bitcoin reserve strategy of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy)—although there are differences in specific forms, the ultimate goal is the same: to achieve the "financialization" and compliant holding of core crypto assets.
This also raises a new question in the market: Is BNB about to welcome its own Strategy moment?
Three Key Players: The Behind-the-Scenes Drivers and Executors
To understand how the BNB treasury plan transitioned from concept to implementation in just three weeks, one must recognize three key roles: YZi Labs, CEA Industries, and 10 X Capital.
They come from different fields, and their combination seems "heterogeneous," but it is precisely this cross-role stitching that allows the project to smoothly land between traditional finance, the crypto ecosystem, and U.S. public companies.
The first signal was released by YZi Labs. This institution, formerly known as Binance Labs, completed its brand independence in early 2025, rebranding as YZi Labs, supported by CZ and He Yi, focusing on cross-cycle investments in areas such as Web 3, AI, and Biotech. This institution has frequently appeared behind infrastructure projects like TON, Zora, and ZKX this year, adept at designing penetrable structural solutions between regulation and capital. Unlike traditional venture capital, YZi Labs acts more like a "structured bridge": it does not directly operate assets but deeply participates in the underlying design, financing structure, and governance mechanisms of projects, helping emerging assets enter the market in a language that traditional finance understands.
In this BNB treasury plan, YZi Labs was the first to promote the structural setup. On July 10, it officially announced its collaboration with 10 X Capital to form The BNB Treasury Company, marking the "official" narrative launch of the BNB treasury.
It is worth mentioning that YZi Labs' chairperson, Ella Zhang, has held leadership positions since the Binance Labs era, having led Binance's initial incubator program and deeply participated in investments in several leading projects. Although the institution now operates independently, its historical background and resource system still maintain a high degree of consensus with Binance.
Because of this, in the context where Binance itself finds it difficult to directly promote the financialization of BNB in the U.S. stock market due to compliance considerations, YZi Labs has become the most suitable "spokesperson" and "structural agent"—it is not Binance, but it understands Binance and can open a path for BNB that traditional markets can comprehend.
The actual implementation of the treasury task falls to CEA Industries. This NASDAQ-listed company (NASDAQ: VAPE) originally focused on indoor agricultural equipment, and its business was not particularly prominent. However, a review of its announcement history shows that CEA has explored "capital transformation" multiple times in recent years through PIPEs, asset swaps, and executive changes. This round of BNB treasury strategy is its latest attempt to complete a strategic shift by "holding on-chain assets on a listed platform." In other words, it has become a "financial container" for BNB.
Facilitating the formation of this container is the structural designer, 10 X Capital. Founded by financial veteran Hans Thomas, this investment bank focuses on PIPE, SPAC, and De-SPAC transactions, frequently participating in the compliance structure design of Web 3 assets in recent years. In this project, 10 X not only manages the PIPE structure and warrant mechanism but also deeply participates in team building: Galaxy Digital co-founder David Namdar serves as CEO, former CalPERS CIO Russell Read serves as CIO, and former Kraken executive Saad Naja also serves as a director.
Capital has a sense of direction, publicly listed companies have execution structures, and the Web 3 camp provides asset narratives—these three forces combine to elevate the BNB treasury plan from an idea to a "auditable, tradable, and transmittable" financial interface.
140 Investors Bet, BNB's "Institutional Anchoring" Logic is Taking Shape
If the treasury mechanism is still a structural innovation, then the capital participation lineup in this round of PIPE directly injects market weight into its narrative.
According to disclosures, the $500 million financing attracted over 140 institutional subscriptions, covering crypto-native funds, family offices, traditional financial players, and even several individual capital representatives. This breadth of subscriptions is extremely rare in recent Web 3 financing cases, and more importantly, it is not anchored in BTC or ETH, but in BNB, which has been hovering in the regulatory gray area in the U.S.
The subscription list is quite representative: Pantera Capital, Arrington Capital, Arche, GSR, dao 5, Kenetic, Protocol Ventures, Hypersphere, Blockchain.com… it almost covers half of the crypto primary market; individual capital players like BitFury founder, Polychain founder Olaf Carlson-Wee, and former SoftBank executive Rajeev Misra are also prominently listed; traditional financial contributors mostly participate indirectly through structured funds or family trusts.
Even more noteworthy is that this round of PIPE is also accompanied by a warrant subscription mechanism of up to $750 million. Investors not only allocated current positions but also bet on the value release space over the next 12–24 months. This type of structural design may be exercised in future valuation stages, adding bricks to BNB's "financial pricing model."
From a funding structure perspective, this is a typical "structured long position" plan. BNB may not wait for an ETF, but the PIPE treasury is becoming a new channel for it to reach Wall Street.
Why are capital players willing to bet on the BNB treasury? After BTC and ETH, the capital market urgently needs to find "the next type of anchor asset." BNB's user base, on-chain applications, trading volume, NFT, and chain game activity still lead the tier in L1 networks.
In June of this year, publicly listed company Nano Labs Ltd (NA) announced that it had signed a convertible bond subscription agreement (hereinafter referred to as "the agreement"). According to this agreement, the company will issue convertible promissory notes (the "bonds") with a total principal of $500 million, subscribed by multiple investors. The first phase plans to purchase $1 billion worth of BNB through convertible bonds and private placements; the long-term goal is to hold 5% to 10% of the total circulating supply of BNB. Nano Labs founder Kong Jianping stated that they have currently purchased 120,000 BNB and are still continuing to buy.
In July, publicly listed company Windtree (WINT) announced that it had signed a $60 million securities purchase agreement with Build and Build Corp, with future subscriptions potentially yielding up to $140 million in total, bringing the total subscription amount to $200 million. The funds raised will primarily be used to initiate the BNB treasury strategy and acquire BNB, and Windtree is expected to become the first NASDAQ-listed company to provide direct investment exposure to BNB tokens.
Conclusion: BNB's Financial Narrative Officially Enters the Third Stage
This is not the first time BNB has attempted to enter the U.S. capital market.
In 2021, as Binance expanded globally, BNB once carried the market expectation of being a "third-pole asset." However, the rapid changes in the regulatory environment quickly marginalized it in the North American market, even becoming a direct target of the SEC's scrutiny. The lack of recognition from the "U.S. valuation system" has long kept its price logic outside the mainstream financial framework.
A turning point appeared this year, as BNB's U.S. stock narrative finally landed. This breakthrough reveals a key trend: the narrative power of crypto assets is shifting from Bitcoin's monopoly to diversification. The ensuing question is: will more L1 projects (such as Solana, TON, Sui) follow suit? Do they possess similar "containerization" potential?
While the answer remains uncertain, BNB's financialization process has clearly entered a new stage: it is no longer just an exchange's platform token and BNB Chain ecological token, but through reshaping valuation models, accounting frameworks, and compliance disclosures, it has established a new positioning within the global financial system. This may not be the climax, but it is undoubtedly an important prologue.
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