- Binance suspends employee after insider trading accusations.
- It's not the first time a Binance employee has been accused of using their privileged position to place profitable crypto trades.
A Binance employee has been suspended after an internal investigation found they’d used one of the crypto exchange’s official X accounts to promote a newly-launched crypto token.
On Sunday, the Binance Futures X account, which has over 523,000 followers, posted — and then deleted — a picture of a tree with several crypto tokens hanging from it, including a token with the Binance logo.
Onchain records showed that minutes before the post, the same picture was used to create a crypto token called “year of yellow fruit” on BNB Chain, the Binance-affiliated blockchain.
On X, several onlookers noticed the coincidence and alleged that the person posting from the Binance account must also have launched the token in a bid to generate interest in it.
Now, Binance has seemingly confirmed those allegations.
In a Tuesday X post, the exchange said that one of its employees had “used insider information to post on official social media and improperly obtain personal gain.”
“These actions constitute abuse of their position for personal gain and violate our policies and code of professional conduct,” Binance said. “The employee was suspended immediately and is pending further disciplinary action.”
Year of the yellow fruit
The inspiration for the scheme appears to have come from a December 4 post from the official Binance account.
“2026: the year of the yellow fruit,” Binance said as part of a series of posts covering a discussion between Raoul Pal, a crypto influencer, and Nic Puckrin, founder of media company Coin Bureau, on-stage at Binance’s Blockchain Week conference in Dubai.
Following the post on the Binance futures account, the year of yellow fruit token soared to a $3.6 million market cap before plummeting some 83%.
Memecoin creators routinely use catchphrases and memes used by Binance or its executives on social media to spin up new tokens.
In October, a token called Binance Life soared to a $524 million market value after Binance co-founders Changpeng Zhao and Yi He used the phrase on X.
Not the first time
It’s not the first time a Binance employee has been accused of using their privileged position to place profitable crypto trades.
In March, the exchange suspended an employee from its wallet team for allegedly using insider information to buy up tokens before Binance announced plans to publicly list them. Investors usually interpret big exchanges like Binance listing tokens as bullish, causing them to increase in value.
The latest incident comes as Binance attempts to signal to both regulators and the broader crypto industry that it is tough on crypto crime.
In 2023, Binance pleaded guilty of violating the Bank Secrecy Act, failure to register as a money transmitting business, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — which the Treasury said enabled criminals to use the exchange to launder money and fund terrorism.
Binance was slammed with a $4.3 billion penalty and also submitted to having essentially every move it makes scrutinised by an independent monitor.
Zhao, the firm’s CEO at the time, stepped down and was sentenced to four months in prison for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. He received a presidential pardon in October.
In 2021, the US Commodity and Futures Trading Commission also looked into whether Binance or its staff profited by taking advantage of its customers, according to Bloomberg News.
Five whistleblowers who reported the insider trading incident will split a $100,000 bounty reward, Binance said.
Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.
