Changpeng Zhao executed a leveraged long trade at 24.7x on Mubarak, which led to a significant increase in the asset’s price.
On March 23, the Binance founder and former CEO initiated a 24.7x leveraged long position on Mubarak (MUBARAK) using 0.04 BNB as collateral on APX Finance. This event was noted on X by on-chain analyst ai_9684xtpa. In response, Zhao commented, “Doing a little on-chain testing on Sunday, as usual. Nothing to be excited about.”
Despite Zhao’s attempt to downplay the situation, ai_9684xtpa indicated that the APX token surged by 26% in the 7 minutes following the trade, climbing from $0.64 to $0.81. Meanwhile, MUBARAK experienced a 5.5% jump, increasing from $0.146 to $0.154. The transaction utilized a public donation address and the position has since been closed.
This market reaction fits a well-known pattern—trades or tweets from Zhao typically lead to increased buying activity. Not long ago, he purchased 20,150 MUBARAK for 1 BNB (approximately $600 at the moment), causing a substantial rise in MUBARAK’s price, even briefly securing its position at the top of BNB Chain’s memecoin rankings based on market cap and trading volume soaring over $180 million, as reported by Root Data.
Nonetheless, Zhao’s perpetual trade on MUBARAK was primarily an experiment, as he later clarified in a post on X, noting, “Just trying the experience, also aiming to see if there is still MEV.”
Zhao has not yet disclosed any insights from his testing related to Maximal Extractable Value. This latest perpetual trade follows a poll he held on X on February 7, where he inquired if BNB Chain should diminish or eliminate MEV problems.
While MEV is typically linked to the Ethereum (ETH) network, BNB Chain users have also encountered significant losses due to MEV activities—where validators manipulate the order of transactions pending inclusion in the block to maximize their earnings. In 2024, BNB users reportedly incurred losses nearing $1.5 billion attributable to MEV.