Why major exchange listings may soon be considered bearish
Listings on Binance and Coinbase were once widely considered good for coin prices
Koshiro K/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
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The days of bullish exchange listings may be over.
I spent the morning reviewing price data for every coin listed on Binance and Coinbase since the start of last year. The results are rough.
In total, there were 84 new listings across both exchanges — 45 on Binance and 40 on Coinbase.
As of this morning, only 12 of those listings have increased in value from their initial trade price on either platform.
On the chart below, each circle represents a different coin listing, starting on the far left in January 2024 and ending on the right with the most recent new addition on Coinbase, VVV.
As you can see, VVV’s 40% collapse on its list price — despite its rally in its first few hours of trade — is not an outlier.
Since December, more than a dozen listings have suffered the same fate. MOODENG, MOG, MOVE, ACX, ORCA, GIGA, ME, TURBO, VELO, USUAL, AIXBT, CGPT, COOKIE, PNUT and TRUMP have all lose value since hitting either Coinbase or Binance — in many cases by more than two–thirds.
Of course, there have been winners. AERO, the native token for Base liquidity hub Aerodrome, is up 640% since it was listed on Coinbase in February last year.
DRIFT, the token for the Solana perps DEX, and ONDO, for the real-world asset platform, have also posted similarly great returns.
Granted, we already know that most cryptocurrencies probably won’t make it. So perhaps it’s all par for the course.
Coins, especially smaller-cap ones, are painfully tied to whatever happens to the price of bitcoin. Still, it’s obvious that it’s only a matter of time until the market realizes the paradigm has shifted.
Historically, common sense has suggested that an exchange listing is a milestone for a coin — opening their markets up to wider investor bases and deeper liquidity.
It wouldn’t surprise me if we start to see the general public urging projects not to list their coins on major exchanges moving forward.
