Author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
On March 24, according to an official Binance announcement, its internal audit team received a report on March 23, 2025, accusing an employee of front-running using insider information to obtain improper gains. Binance has launched a comprehensive internal investigation.
At the time of the alleged incident, the person was working in the Binance Wallet team, which had no business relationship or collaboration with the involved project. However, he was suspected of abusing previous position information for personal gain. The employee had worked in business development at BNB Chain a month before joining the wallet team. He used information and familiarity with the project from his previous position, knowing the project was about to have a Token Generation Event (TGE), and purchased a large number of project tokens using multiple linked wallet addresses before the project's public token announcement.
After the announcement, the employee quickly sold part of the held tokens, making significant profits, while retaining substantial unrealized gains on the remaining tokens. Based on non-public information obtained from his previous position, this action constitutes front-running and clearly violates company policy.
The preliminary investigation has been completed, and the person involved has been suspended and will face legal accountability. Additionally, Binance has completed report verification and deduplication, and will distribute the $100,000 reward equally among the reporters.
On-chain Evidence Catches the "Rat Tail"
According to X user @土澳大狮兄 BroLeon, Binance employee Freddie Ng is accused of illegal insider trading, participating in a UUU token arbitrage scheme worth $110,000. After publishing on-chain information, he demanded a reasonable explanation from Binance.
BroLeon stated, "The UUU token insider trading has been confirmed! I just verified the report, and the entire theft has been exposed on-chain. I wonder how Binance Wallet BD and growth employee Freddie Ng will be handled this time."
According to the reconstructed process, Binance employee Freddie Ng certainly knew in advance about the UUU token pump. Using his small account address starting with 0xEDb0, he spent 10 BNB to buy 24.1 million UUU tokens at an average price of $0.00026, worth $312,000, and transferred all to a wallet starting with 0x44a.
Subsequently, Freddie sold 6.02 million UUU tokens through the Bitget wallet at an average price of $0.0188, obtaining $113,600, and scattered the remaining UUU tokens to 8 different addresses, each ranging from tens of thousands of dollars.
BroLeon said, "His oversight was that the money in the insider trading wallet was transferred 121 days ago from his real-name wallet freddieng.bnb (starting with 0x77C)."
On March 23, BNB Chain trading platform uDex officially launched its official token UUU on four.meme. uDEX is a member of BNBChain MVB's eighth season, providing on-chain information for users and allowing direct trading from social networks. Currently, the token's market value is $8.22 million.
A Persistent Industry Ailment
Insider trading is not unique to the cryptocurrency market. Taking the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) annual data as an example, insider trading-related enforcement cases average 8-9% of total annual enforcement actions, a proportion that already exists in traditional financial markets.
This is not the first time Binance has faced insider trading suspicions, but previously, few employees were investigated and processed. Since 2018, the cryptocurrency industry has continuously faced systematic doubts about internal trading on trading platforms. Many exchanges have been accused of similar insider trading issues at different times, becoming an industry ailment.
The transparency and decentralization of the cryptocurrency market have not completely eliminated insider trading risks. Instead, due to the lack of unified regulation and imperfect internal controls, trading platforms easily become breeding grounds for such behaviors. Although major exchanges have strengthened compliance and risk control system construction, the anonymity of cryptocurrencies, technical complexity, and global operating models still pose significant challenges to traditional regulatory methods.
Industry giants like Binance often demonstrate strong deterrence when facing internal trading abuse issues but frequently fail to prevent similar events due to ineffective prevention and monitoring measures. Externally, Binance's swift investigation and action this time show its determination to rectify, but whether it can completely eliminate insider trading issues still requires the industry to fundamentally strengthen compliance management and transparency from the source.
