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BNB Chain is taking a former employee to court. The accusation: using a company-owned wallet to quietly launch a memecoin, scoop up nearly 80% of its supply, and walk away with roughly $638,000.
The wallet at the center of it all wasn’t some obscure internal tool. Per BNB Chain, it was originally set up for a video tutorial — a demonstration meant to show users how to launch tokens on the BNB Chain network. Pretty routine stuff, honestly. But the former employee apparently held onto the wallet’s seed phrase after leaving the company. And once they had that, they had everything they needed.
796.7 million tokens. Bought through four freshly created wallets.
How the ASTEROID Trade Went Down
Blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain pieced together what happened. According to their on-chain analysis, the former employee deployed a memecoin called Asteroid Shiba — ticker: ASTEROID. Using those four new wallets, the individual snapped up 796.7 million tokens, which worked out to 79.67% of the token’s entire supply. That’s not a small position. That’s basically owning the thing outright.
Then came the sell-off. Lookonchain says 718.8 million of those tokens were dumped, generating 1,103 BNB. At the time of the transactions, that BNB was worth approximately $638,000. The whole setup — create token, buy the bulk of it quietly, sell into whatever demand appeared — is a pattern the crypto world knows well. It’s a rug pull structure, basically, even if the legal framing here is about unauthorized access rather than fraud per se.
BNB Chain moved fast to separate itself from the token. The company said flat out that it didn’t create, authorize, or promote Asteroid Shiba, and that it has no control over the token or the wallet address involved. Clear enough.
CZ Calls It Out, Legal Action Follows
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao — better known as CZ — didn’t stay quiet either. He called the former employee a “scammer” and told users to “Stay SAFU,” which is Binance’s long-running shorthand for keeping funds secure. CZ’s public comment probably reached more people faster than any press release would have.
BNB Chain is now in the middle of legal proceedings against the individual. No details on the specific charges or jurisdiction have come out yet. The company hasn’t said whether it’s trying to recover the 1,103 BNB, or whether that’s even realistic at this point given how crypto asset recovery tends to go. Unclear, and BNB Chain hasn’t offered more on that front.
What’s not unclear is the core of the problem: a seed phrase that should have been rotated or invalidated when the employee left wasn’t. Seed phrases are essentially master keys. Whoever has one controls the wallet — full stop. It doesn’t matter what the original intent of the wallet was, or who set it up, or why. If an ex-employee walks out the door with that phrase still memorized or written down somewhere, the company’s exposure doesn’t end on their last day.
What This Means for Crypto Company Security
The crypto industry has wrestled with insider risk for years. It’s not a new problem. Exchanges, protocols, and blockchain companies often move fast and sometimes let internal controls lag behind growth. Access management — who has keys to what, and whether those keys get revoked when someone leaves — is one of those things that’s easy to deprioritize until something goes wrong.
BNB Chain’s situation is a fairly stark example of what that gap can cost. The wallet was a tutorial wallet. Low stakes by design. But the seed phrase was the real asset, and it wasn’t treated that way.
Lookonchain’s role here is worth noting. The platform tracked the wallet activity, connected the dots between the newly created wallets and the token launch, and put numbers to the transaction. That kind of on-chain transparency is one of the things that makes public blockchains different from traditional finance — the trail is there, it’s just a question of whether anyone’s watching closely enough to follow it.
BNB Chain says it’s committed to addressing what happened and to making its position clear to the public. Legal proceedings are ongoing. The company hasn’t provided a timeline, and given how these cases tend to move, probably won’t for a while.
The 1,103 BNB is sitting somewhere. The former employee’s identity hasn’t been named publicly in the materials available. And the ASTEROID token itself is, for all practical purposes, worthless to anyone who bought it without knowing what was coming.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Asteroid Shiba token and who created it?
Asteroid Shiba (ASTEROID) is a memecoin allegedly launched by a former BNB Chain employee using a company wallet originally set up for a video tutorial. BNB Chain says it had no involvement in creating or promoting the token.
How much money did the former employee allegedly make from ASTEROID?
According to Lookonchain, the former employee sold 718.8 million ASTEROID tokens for 1,103 BNB, worth approximately $638,000 at the time of the transactions.
