Cointelegraph3 hours agoCrypto1 min read

BNB Chain Pursues Legal Action Over Former Employee's Alleged Memecoin Launch

Quick Look

BNB Chain is taking legal action against a former employee who allegedly used unauthorized access to a wallet, originally for a tutorial, to launch the memecoin Asteroid Shiba (ASTEROID) and sell tokens worth $638,000.

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Why It Matters

A wallet created for a BNB Chain tutorial was allegedly accessed by a former employee using a retained seed phrase. This access was then used to launch a memecoin.

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BNB Chain, the blockchain ecosystem behind the BNB cryptocurrency, said it is pursuing legal action after a former employee allegedly used unauthorized access to a wallet to launch a memecoin.

In an X post on Saturday, BNB Chain said the wallet was originally created for a video tutorial explaining how to launch tokens on BNB Chain. It said the former employee retained unauthorized access to the wallet’s seed phrase after leaving the company and later used the address to create a new token.

Blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain subsequently alleged that the former employee deployed a meme token called Asteroid Shiba (ASTEROID) and used four newly created wallets to buy 796.7 million tokens, representing 79.67% of the total supply. Lookonchain further alleged that the wallets later sold 718.8 million tokens for 1,103 BNB, worth about $638,000 at the time of the transaction.

“BNB Chain did not create, authorize, promote or participate in the creation of this token and has no control over the token or wallet address,” BNB Chain said.

Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao shared BNB Chain’s statement on X and wrote that the former employee was “basically a scammer,” while advising users to “Stay SAFU.”