Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Author | Ethan ( @ethanzhang_web 3 )

After Bitcoin became the benchmark for reserve assets of listed companies, other mainstream cryptocurrencies are also attracting the attention of institutions. BNB, the ecological token of Binance, the world's largest exchange, recently ushered in another major breakthrough in its strategic reserve mechanism.

On the evening of July 28, CEA Industries Inc. (NASDAQ: VAPE), a US-listed company, and 10 X Capital jointly announced the completion of a PIPE (Private Investment Public Equity) financing of up to US$500 million, which will be used to establish a crypto asset reserve treasury with BNB as the core. The transaction structure also includes up to US$750 million in warrants, bringing the total potential financing scale to up to US$1.25 billion.

This cooperation is not without trace. As early as July 10, YZi Labs first disclosed that it would support 10X Capital in establishing a company called "The BNB Treasury Company" to hold BNB in the secondary market and seek to be listed on major US exchanges. Although the market response was tepid at the time, industry insiders have regarded 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 BNB positions in the secondary market. The core is to provide regulated BNB exposure to institutional and retail investors with the help of the compliance structure of US-listed companies . This design logic is comparable to Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy)'s Bitcoin reserve strategy - 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 ushering in its own strategy moment?

Three main characters appear: the promoter and the executor behind the scenes

To understand how the BNB Treasury project was completed from conception to implementation within three weeks, we must know three key roles: YZi Labs, CEA Industries and 10 X Capital .

They come from different fields and the combination seems "heterogeneous", but it is this cross-role splicing that enables the project to be successfully implemented between traditional finance, crypto ecology and US stock companies.

The first to send out the signal was YZi Labs. This institution was formerly known as Binance Labs. It completed its brand independence in early 2025 and was renamed YZi Labs. It is jointly supported by CZ and He Yi, focusing on cross-cycle investments in Web 3, AI and Biotech. This institution has frequently appeared behind infrastructure projects such as TON, Zora, and ZKX this year, and is good at designing penetrable structural solutions between supervision and capital. Unlike traditional venture capital, YZi Labs is more like a "structural bridge": it does not directly operate assets, but is deeply involved in the underlying design, financing structure and governance mechanism of the project, helping emerging assets enter the market in a language that traditional finance can understand.

In this BNB Treasury plan, YZi Labs was the first party to promote the construction of the structure. On July 10, it officially announced its first cooperation with 10 X Capital to form The BNB Treasury Company, and the "official" narrative of the BNB Treasury was launched.

It is worth mentioning that Ella Zhang, chairman of YZi Labs, has held leadership positions since the Binance Labs period, led the initial Binance incubator program, and was deeply involved in the investment of multiple leading projects. Although the organization has been operating independently, its historical background and resource system still maintain a high degree of consensus with Binance.

Because of this, in the context of Binance itself being unable 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 also open a channel for BNB that the traditional market can understand.

The company that actually undertakes the task of implementing the treasury is CEA Industries. This Nasdaq-listed company (NASDAQ: VAPE) was originally engaged in indoor agricultural equipment, and its business was not out of the circle. However, looking through its announcement history, it can be seen that CEA has explored "capital transformation" many times in recent years through PIPE, asset replacement and executive replacement. This round of BNB treasury strategy is its latest attempt to complete the strategic switch by "listed platform holding on-chain assets". In other words, it has become a "financial container" that carries BNB.

The one who facilitated the formation of this container was the structural designer 10 X Capital. Founded by financial veteran Hans Thomas, this investment bank focuses on PIPE, SPAC and De-SPAC transactions, and has frequently participated in the compliance structure design of Web 3 assets in recent years. In this project, 10 X not only operated the PIPE structure and warrant mechanism, but also deeply participated in the team building: Galaxy Digital co-founder David Namdar served as CEO, former CalPERS CIO Russell Read served as CIO, and former Kraken executive Saad Naja also served as a director.

Capital has a sense of direction, listed companies have an execution structure, and the Web 3 camp provides asset narratives - the three work together to enable the BNB Treasury plan to leap from a concept to an "auditable, tradable, and transferable" financial interface.

140 investors bet on BNB, and the logic of "institutional anchoring" is taking shape

If the treasury mechanism is still a structural innovation, then the capital participation lineup of this round of PIPE directly injects market weight into its narrative.

According to the disclosure, the $500 million financing attracted more than 140 institutions to subscribe, including crypto-native funds, family offices, traditional financial players, and even several individual capital representatives. This breadth of subscription is extremely rare in Web 3 financing cases in recent years. More importantly, it is not anchored to BTC or ETH, but to BNB, which has been wandering in the gray area of US regulation.

The subscription list is quite representative: Pantera Capital, Arrington Capital, Arche, GSR, dao 5, Kenetic, Protocol Ventures, Hypersphere, Blockchain.com... almost half of the primary crypto market; individual capital players such as BitFury founder, Polychain founder Olaf Carlson-Wee, and former SoftBank executive Rajeev Misra are also on the list; traditional financial investors mostly participate indirectly through structured funds or family trusts.

What is more noteworthy is that this round of PIPE also comes with a warrant subscription mechanism of up to US$750 million. Investors not only allocate current positions, but also bet on the value release space in the next 12-24 months. This type of structural design may be exercised in a certain valuation stage in the future, contributing to BNB's "financial pricing model".

From the perspective of capital structure, this is a typical "structured long-term long" plan. BNB may not be able to wait for ETF, but the PIPE treasury is becoming a new channel for it to reach Wall Street.

Why are investors willing to bet on the BNB treasury? After BTC and ETH, the capital market is in urgent need of finding the "next type of anchor asset". BNB's user base, on-chain applications, transaction volume, NFT and chain game activity are still in the leading echelon in the L1 network.

In June this year, Nano Labs Ltd (NA), a US-listed company, announced that it had signed a convertible bond subscription agreement (hereinafter referred to as the "Agreement"). According to the agreement, the company will issue convertible promissory note bonds ("Bonds") with a total principal of US$500 million, which will be subscribed by multiple investors. The first phase plans to purchase BNB worth US$1 billion through convertible bonds and private placements; the long-term goal is to hold 5% to 10% of the total circulation of BNB. Kong Jianping, founder of Nano Labs , said in a post that 120,000 BNBs have been purchased so far and are still being purchased.

In July, Windtree (WINT), a U.S.-listed company, announced that it had signed a $60 million securities purchase agreement with Build and Build Corp. Future subscriptions may generate a total return of up to $140 million, with a total subscription amount of up to $200 million. The proceeds from this fundraising will be mainly used to launch the BNB treasury strategy and acquire BNB. Windtree is also expected to become the first Nasdaq-listed company to provide direct investment exposure to BNB tokens.

Conclusion: BNB’s financial narrative has officially entered the third stage

This is not the first time BNB has attempted to enter the U.S. capital market.

When Binance expanded globally in 2021, BNB once carried the market's expectations of being a "third-pole asset". However, the dramatic changes in the regulatory environment quickly marginalized it in the North American market, and even became the subject of direct questioning by the SEC. The lack of recognition from the "American valuation system" has caused its price logic to be outside the mainstream financial framework for a long time.

The turning point came this year, when BNB's US stock narrative finally landed. This breakthrough reveals a key trend: the financial narrative of crypto assets is moving from Bitcoin's monopoly to diversification. The question that follows is: Will more L1 projects (such as Solana, TON, Sui) follow suit? Do they have similar "containerization" potential?

Although the answer is unknown, the financialization process of BNB has clearly entered a new stage: it is no longer just a platform currency of the exchange and a BNB Chain ecological token, but has established a new position in the global financial system by reshaping the valuation model, accounting framework and compliance disclosure. This may not be the climax, but it is undoubtedly an important prologue.