Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, widely known as CZ, has burned roughly $490,000 worth of meme coins that had been sent to his publicly listed donation wallet, saying he was simply “cleaning up” the address.
On-chain analyst Ai Yi first flagged the transaction, reporting that the wallet destroyed three tokens, quq, SIREN, and BNBCARD, with estimated values of $305,000, $142,000, and $43,000, respectively. Ai Yi noted that this was the second such burn in less than a year, after a previous incident seven months ago.
CZ responded directly to the post on X, clarifying that the action was not symbolic but practical. “Just cleaning up the wallet,” he wrote. “The donation address only keeps #BNB. Next time, I might choose to market sell them. Do not send tokens to the address if you don’t want them to be sold on the market.”
Managing unsolicited tokens
Zhao’s donation address, originally set up for community contributions and transparency, has often been targeted by smaller projects seeking attention.
In the crypto space, it is common for token creators to send coins to KOLs, celebrities, or exchange-linked wallets in hopes of implying endorsement or generating publicity. But for the Binance founder, these gestures appear to be more nuisance than opportunity.
Earlier this year, Zhao warned that meme coin developers were flooding his wallet with tokens he neither asked for nor wanted. On March 31, he wrote on X, “Sent a few high-value tokens (6 or 7 figures) on my address to a burn address. There are a few new AI solutions to automate this, but they have not been security reviewed. Will do the rest later. Please do not send more tokens to the address expecting an interaction.”
Per on-chain intelligence platform Arkham Intel, CZ burned $1.6 million worth of Broccoli tokens and $1.95 million worth of Tutorial tokens around that period.
The new burn follows the same pattern, reinforcing that Zhao intends his wallet to contain only BNB, Binance’s native token.
A warning to meme coin creators
Burning the tokens generally reduces their overall supply, and such actions are known to support price appreciation.
However, Zhao’s mention of “market selling” sends a message that future token senders might face not just burns but direct sales, which could potentially affect the token price negatively, and is also a reversal of CZ’s position on the matter, when he stated that he doesn’t want to hurt the holders.
In March, when an X user suggested he give out the tokens to charity instead of destroying them, CZ reportedly said, “It will destroy the tokens. Some of them send the majority to the address. I don’t like it, as it creates work for me. But I don’t want to hurt the holders either.”
CZ’s method of dealing with unsolicited donations differs from that of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who typically liquidates and sends out the proceeds as charitable donations.
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