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Trader Turns $9.6K Into $282K by Tracking CZ’s Public Wallet

Ingrid Wolf
18 August 2026 2 min read

A crypto trader turned roughly $9,645 into about $282,000 within hours by monitoring Changpeng “CZ” Zhao’s public wallet and reacting almost instantly to a token burn.

Trader Turns $9.6K Into $282K by Tracking CZ’s Public Wallet

According to Lookonchain, the trader bought 84.61 million MARSCOIN with 16 BNB$572.56 at the same moment CZ burned 4,444 MARSCOIN from his public address.

The wallet reportedly paid unusually high gas fees to get the transaction executed quickly, effectively racing other traders.

Related: CZ Warns Millionaires May Soon Be Unable to Afford a Single Bitcoin

Contents

Trader Used a “2x and Take Out the Initial Investment” Strategy

After MARSCOIN roughly doubled, the wallet sold 42.3 million tokens for 16.4 BNB, recovering the original 16 BNB investment. The remaining 42.3 million tokens gradually sold for about 465 BNB, worth roughly $282,000 at the time.

Lookonchain described the approach as a “2x and take out the initial investment” strategy. By recovering the original capital early, the trader could continue riding the move with substantially less money at risk.

The result was a reported 29x return and the most profitable tracked MARSCOIN wallet.

CZ’s Token Burn Wasn’t an Endorsement

The irony is that CZ says the transaction that triggered the frenzy was not intended as a bullish signal at all.

He later explained that he had been testing Trust Wallet and found his public address cluttered with unsolicited memecoins. He began burning some of them simply to clean up the wallet.

“The more I burn them, the more people will send meme coins to the address,” CZ wrote. He added that blockchain transparency led to people over-interpreting virtually every interaction with the wallet.

He eventually decided to stop using the address altogether. Mere hours later, CZ transferred his BNB and BinanceLife tokens to Giggle Academy and effectively turned the old wallet into a burn address.

That decision came after MARSCOIN had already produced huge winners—and losers.

Another trader reportedly spent about $133,000 in USDT$0.9991 on 6.15 million MARSCOIN after the price had surged. Following CZ’s clarification, the token collapsed more than 90%. The wallet exited for roughly $22,400, losing around $110,700 in about two hours.

Read More: Bitcoin Is Losing Its Grip on Crypto: Why Americans Are Looking Beyond BTC in 2026

The episode shows the extreme reflexivity of thinly traded memecoins: one routine wallet transaction from a high-profile crypto figure can become a market signal simply because enough traders are watching for one.

Ingrid Wolf

Ingrid Wolf is a writer focused on making complex ideas easier to understand through clear, sharp content. She brings a crypto-newbie-friendly lens to Web3 topics, helping translate technical market concepts…