Some memecoin burning transactions seen on Binance founder Changpeng Zhao’s (CZ) publicly available donation address turned out not to have been carried out by CZ himself, as initially thought. On-chain data shows that the developer of the token called “Niu Lai” used privileged authority in the smart contract to forcibly transfer the tokens from CZ’s address.
According to Arkham data, three consecutive token burns were observed at CZ’s publicly disclosed donation address around 4:15 PM today. These transactions involved sending 4,444 “Niu Lai” memecoins, 4,444 MarsCoins, and 4,444 “Binance Life” tokens to the burn address.
However, the investigation revealed that the burning of 4,444 “Niu Lai” tokens, with the contract address starting with 0xD043B6, was not initiated by CZ. The transaction was carried out by the address 0xcf86..383, which is stated to be the token’s developer.
According to on-chain data, the developer defined a privileged authorization via a smart contract to mint 1 billion tokens for their own address. They then sent approximately 800 million tokens to CZ’s address. Subsequently, using the transferFrom function in the contract, they moved 4,444 tokens from CZ’s address to the burning address without any active CZ transaction.
As a result of this method, transactions may appear as “From: Changpeng Zhao” on on-chain tracking platforms. However, it is stated that the CZ address does not grant any authorization to the token or its developer. Therefore, the transaction record alone does not mean that CZ supports the token, participates in the project, or knowingly burns it.
Similar methods have reportedly been used before. In 2025, a token project called CAAB allegedly sent approximately 80% of the total supply directly to CZ’s donation address, marketing it as “CZ holding the token,” and artificially inflated the token’s market value for a short period.
It was also claimed that another token, called SHORT, sent 99.9% of its supply to CZ’s address, that the price briefly increased after CZ cleaned and burned these tokens, and that the project team sold during this period of activity.
*This is not investment advice.
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