Binance Coin (BNB) was added for margin trading on Binance on July 18 of this year. Although the CEO of the exchange, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), warned users not to short it, they would have been better off counter-trading his advice.

Once a safe haven during the bear market of 2018, Binance Coin (BNB) has had a spectacular fall in the second half of 2019. For comparison, in June of this year, the exchange’s cryptocurrency was trading well above $30 for the entire month. Since then, it has more than halved in value. It is currently trading at $12.95, at the time of writing.

However, this is counter to what we would’ve expected had we listened to Binance’s own CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ). On July 18, 2019, Binance officially announced it would officially be offering BNB for margin trading. In a follow-up tweet, CZ praised the development and recommended that users don’t short BNB or else they will get “REKT.”

At the time, he received some criticism for trying to influence the market price. However, it’s now clear that, had traders actually shorted BNB, they would have been rewarded quite nicely.

As Twitter account @karbonbased humorously calculated yesterday, BNB is down roughly -54 percent since CZ made the tweet. In hindsight, this seems like the most obvious counter-trade of 2019. If you had been shorting since CZ’s tweet, you would have closed out the year strong with substantial profits.

Some have joked that CZ’s failed prediction makes him the ‘new CNBC.’ CNBC has gained notoriety in the cryptocurrency industry for making terrible calls, and many traders consider it an effective strategy to counter-trade the media outlet.

Binance Coin (BNB) is still a behemoth in the cryptocurrency industry, however. Binance not only leads the market in trading volume, but BNB has a market capitalization of $2B. Depending on what your long-term perspective is, this could mean that it has more room to fall — or grow if you believe in the viability of BNB’s model.