BNB Standard rings the Nasdaq opening bell as CZ calls crypto the 'native currency for AI'

BNB Standard Corporation (Nasdaq: BNC), formerly CEA Industries, rang the Nasdaq opening bell in New York on Monday. The ceremony at 13:30 GMT marked the company’s new name and its new chief executive, Alex Odagiu.

Odagiu rang the bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square, according to Nasdaq. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, joined him. Ella Zhang, managing partner of YZi Labs, and Thomas Chen, chief business officer of BNB Chain, also attended, along with the company’s board.

The company changed its name from CEA Industries on 29 September and kept the BNC ticker. It named Odagiu chief executive on 19 October.

Largest listed BNB treasury

BNB Standard holds more than 515,400 BNB, worth about $383.5m, The Block reported. That is the largest BNB treasury of any publicly traded company.

Odagiu said the company wants to do more than hold the token, starting with running its own BNB Chain validator.

“We’re not here just to hold the asset,” Odagiu said during the bell ceremony. “We’re here to build an operating business on BNB Chain.”

At a media briefing afterwards, he named payments and AI agents as possible future sources of activity on the network. He stressed that BNB Standard is not a payments company for now.

CZ: crypto is the ‘native currency for AI’

At the same briefing, Zhao said crypto will be the “native currency for AI”. AI could use bitcoin, existing stablecoins or tokens that AI companies launch in future, he said, but he wants BNB Chain to be a major network for it.

“We hope to make the BNB Chain the major one, but that’s still to be done,” he said, according to The Block.

He also admitted that paying with crypto is still awkward for ordinary users. “I try to pay everything in crypto, and it’s pretty clunky,” he said. He said payments start-ups should focus first on underserved markets and expensive remittance routes, rather than taking on Apple Pay or Google Pay in the US.

Later on Monday, Zhao wrote on X: “When BNB started 9 years ago, I never thought I would be ringing the bell for a blockchain token (treasury) on NASDAQ one day. I don’t know what shows crypto and tradfi converging more than this.”

Shares and BNB price

BNC shares traded at around $5.36 on Monday, and the stock is down by nearly 17% so far this year, The Block reported.

BNB was trading at $743.60 at 19:07 GMT on Monday, up 0.41% over 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data cited by The Crypto Times.

The ceremony follows a shake-up of how the company is run. In June, BNB Standard ended a proxy fight with its largest shareholder, YZi Labs. Under the deal, Odagiu, Zhang and Matthew Roszak joined its board.