jopthedev
Newbie
- Jul 1, 2025
- 6
- 7
Been lurking here forever, finally got something worth posting.
The whole thing in one sentence
MEXC gives out 0% fees on a load of altcoin futures as a promo. Binance moves first, MEXC lags a tiny bit behind it. You trade that lag on MEXC where it costs you literally nothing to get in or out. The zero fee is the ENTIRE reason this prints. On a normal account youre paying 4-5 bps round trip and this exact strategy just bleeds out, so dont even bother trying it without the promo.
Why the lag is even there
Price gets discovered on Binance, thats where the real volume sits. The smaller alts on MEXC just follow it with a little delay. Sometimes half a second, sometimes a couple seconds when theres a sharp candle. In that little window the two prices dont match. You take the side that bets MEXC snaps back to Binance and you bail the moment it does. At 0 fee even a 5-6 bps move is just profit in your pocket.
The manual way (start here)
Get a MEXC account that actually has the 0 fee thing on futures. Check your fee tier, not everyone gets it and it usually lands on the alt pairs, not BTC or ETH. Use a fresh account for this, not your main, and assume youll be burning through a few of them over time.
- Open the same coin twice, Binance on one tab, MEXC futures right next to it.
- Watch Binance. When it jerks and MEXC hasnt caught up, take the same direction on MEXC. Binance dumps, you short MEXC and cover when it catches down. Other way for a pump.
- The second it converges, close it. If it runs against you, close flat or for peanuts and move on. Dont sit there hoping, youre on big leverage and itll liquidate you in a heartbeat.
Coin choice matters. The big majors barely lag so theres nothing to grab. The money is in the mid tier alts, volatile and a bit slow to react, stuff like ZEC or ONDO tier, not BTC/ETH.
Doing it for real (software)
Hands work but lets be honest, youre slow. A person reacts in about a second and the gap can be gone in a few hundred milliseconds, so you either miss most of them or you tool up. There are free scalping terminals that hook MEXC and Binance up by API and stack both orderbooks tick aligned next to each other, way faster to click. Or if you can write even a little code, a tiny script that reads both websockets and yells at you when the gap opens is an afternoon of work and changes everything. I ended up making my own little overlay that just shows me the live gap and which way to go, took most of the pain out of doing it by hand.
What you actually make
Dont quit your job over this. Small balance, by hand, im talking maybe $50 to $100 on a good session, and good sessions arent every day. You need the market actually moving. When alts are flat theres no gap and theres nothing to do. I had a two hour run that did about $80, and ive had hours that did nothing at all. Its a grind.
It also doesnt scale nicely. The alt books are thin, so size up too hard and youre the one pushing the price around, gap gone. And the bigger you get the faster MEXC clocks you.
Risks, actually read this one
- Youre on dumb leverage on a lagging book. One move against you on x100 and youre liquidated, gone. Only ever risk what you deposited on that one account. Treat it as burnable money, not savings.
- MEXC hates people farming their promo. Usual move is they just quietly switch your 0 fee back off. Sometimes a risk control flag, sometimes a KYC recheck, worst case the account gets frozen. Most of the time ive just seen the fee removed, but assume any single account has a shelf life. Thats the real ceiling on this, not the strategy, you end up cycling accounts.
- Keep your withdrawals looking normal. Deposit 10 and pull 100 out every single day and you look exactly like what you are. Spread it out, dont be obvious.
The whole thing in one sentence
MEXC gives out 0% fees on a load of altcoin futures as a promo. Binance moves first, MEXC lags a tiny bit behind it. You trade that lag on MEXC where it costs you literally nothing to get in or out. The zero fee is the ENTIRE reason this prints. On a normal account youre paying 4-5 bps round trip and this exact strategy just bleeds out, so dont even bother trying it without the promo.
Why the lag is even there
Price gets discovered on Binance, thats where the real volume sits. The smaller alts on MEXC just follow it with a little delay. Sometimes half a second, sometimes a couple seconds when theres a sharp candle. In that little window the two prices dont match. You take the side that bets MEXC snaps back to Binance and you bail the moment it does. At 0 fee even a 5-6 bps move is just profit in your pocket.
The manual way (start here)
Get a MEXC account that actually has the 0 fee thing on futures. Check your fee tier, not everyone gets it and it usually lands on the alt pairs, not BTC or ETH. Use a fresh account for this, not your main, and assume youll be burning through a few of them over time.
- Open the same coin twice, Binance on one tab, MEXC futures right next to it.
- Watch Binance. When it jerks and MEXC hasnt caught up, take the same direction on MEXC. Binance dumps, you short MEXC and cover when it catches down. Other way for a pump.
- The second it converges, close it. If it runs against you, close flat or for peanuts and move on. Dont sit there hoping, youre on big leverage and itll liquidate you in a heartbeat.
Coin choice matters. The big majors barely lag so theres nothing to grab. The money is in the mid tier alts, volatile and a bit slow to react, stuff like ZEC or ONDO tier, not BTC/ETH.
Doing it for real (software)
Hands work but lets be honest, youre slow. A person reacts in about a second and the gap can be gone in a few hundred milliseconds, so you either miss most of them or you tool up. There are free scalping terminals that hook MEXC and Binance up by API and stack both orderbooks tick aligned next to each other, way faster to click. Or if you can write even a little code, a tiny script that reads both websockets and yells at you when the gap opens is an afternoon of work and changes everything. I ended up making my own little overlay that just shows me the live gap and which way to go, took most of the pain out of doing it by hand.
What you actually make
Dont quit your job over this. Small balance, by hand, im talking maybe $50 to $100 on a good session, and good sessions arent every day. You need the market actually moving. When alts are flat theres no gap and theres nothing to do. I had a two hour run that did about $80, and ive had hours that did nothing at all. Its a grind.
It also doesnt scale nicely. The alt books are thin, so size up too hard and youre the one pushing the price around, gap gone. And the bigger you get the faster MEXC clocks you.
Risks, actually read this one
- Youre on dumb leverage on a lagging book. One move against you on x100 and youre liquidated, gone. Only ever risk what you deposited on that one account. Treat it as burnable money, not savings.
- MEXC hates people farming their promo. Usual move is they just quietly switch your 0 fee back off. Sometimes a risk control flag, sometimes a KYC recheck, worst case the account gets frozen. Most of the time ive just seen the fee removed, but assume any single account has a shelf life. Thats the real ceiling on this, not the strategy, you end up cycling accounts.
- Keep your withdrawals looking normal. Deposit 10 and pull 100 out every single day and you look exactly like what you are. Spread it out, dont be obvious.
