A crypto trader turned a $9,645 stake into roughly $282,000 in a matter of hours by watching Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao's public wallet and buying into a token the moment CZ interacted with it. The trader spent 16 BNB, plus about $9.93 in gas fees, to purchase 84.61 million Marscoin (MARS) tokens within the same second that CZ burned 4,444 MARS from his own address — an address that, according to BscScan's on-chain records, market participants have taken to watching closely for exactly this kind of signal.
The burn sent Marscoin's market cap surging toward $30 million as other wallets piled in behind the trader. Rather than holding the full position, the trader ran what on-chain analytics firm Lookonchain described as a "2x and take out the initial investment" strategy: once the position had roughly doubled, they sold half — 42.3 million tokens — for 16.4 BNB, recovering the original stake before letting the remaining tokens ride. The final cash-out brought in 465 BNB in total, a roughly 29x return, or about a 2,840% gain, on the initial outlay.
CZ Says the Burns Were Never a Signal
CZ has since said publicly that the burns were routine spam-token cleanup through the Trust Wallet app, not a deliberate signal to traders — but that explanation came only after his address had already become a magnet for copy-traders scanning for his next move. The dynamic turned Marscoin into a live demonstration of how closely retail traders now track influential public wallets, treating even mundane housekeeping transactions as actionable alpha.
Not Every Copy-Trade Ends the Same Way
The strategy is far from risk-free, as a separate trader following the same address found out.
Related: Trader Loses $110K in Two Hours FOMOing Into a CZ-Linked Meme Coin
When CZ later posted that he would stop using the wallet altogether and moved to shut it down, Marscoin collapsed more than 90% within hours, wiping out anyone still holding a position built on the assumption that CZ's activity would keep drawing buyers. CZ ultimately burned the wallet entirely and donated its remaining funds to Giggle Academy, closing the loop on an address that briefly became one of the most closely watched in crypto.
The episode underscores the extreme volatility built into minor, low-liquidity tokens: the same mechanic that turned $9,645 into $282,000 for one trader turned a six-figure position into a six-figure loss for another, within the space of a single day, on the strength of nothing more than a wallet that a widely followed founder happened to touch.
