VECStake Live - CEX Listing Carnage: 12% Stay Above Water

June 10, 2026 | VECS News

A devastating new report from digital asset analytics firm Messari has revealed that just 12 percent of tokens newly listed on centralized exchanges since January 2024 have managed to trade above their initial listing price as of mid-April 2025. The study, titled “The Great Listing Imbalance,” analysed 187 token listings across Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, and Bybit over a 15-month period and found that 164 of those assets — a staggering 88 percent — are now underwater relative to the price at which they first appeared on the exchanges. The median decline from listing price stands at 42 percent, while the average token in the bottom quartile has lost over 70 percent of its value. The data paints a stark picture of a market where the much-hyped “CEX listing premium” has all but evaporated, leaving retail investors holding the bag while venture capital funds, market makers, and early airdrop farmers extract liquidity on the way down.

The underperformance cuts across virtually every sector of the crypto economy, but the worst-hit categories are gaming and infrastructure tokens, where more than 90 percent of new listings are trading below their debut price. DeFi tokens fared marginally better, with 18 percent staying above water, primarily those linked to protocols with strong fee generation and clear product-market fit. Messari’s Head of Research, Dr. Sarah Chen, noted in the report that “the data dispels the myth that a top-tier CEX listing automatically confers lasting value. We are seeing a pattern where tokens launch at fully diluted valuations in the hundreds of millions, sometimes billions, based on little more than narrative and insider demand. Once the initial liquidity event is over and market makers pull back their support, gravity takes hold.” Chen’s analysis points to a growing disconnect between the private market valuations at which projects raise capital and the public market’s willingness to sustain those levels.

The root cause of the imbalance, according to multiple market participants, lies in the sheer volume of new token supply flooding into centralized exchanges. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, more than 60 tokens were listed on major CEXs, a pace that far outstrips the inflow of fresh capital. “We are in an environment of chronic token oversupply,” said Marco Velasquez, Partner at crypto venture capital firm Framework Ventures. “Founders raised capital at inflated valuations in 2022 and 2023, and those tokens are now unlocking and hitting the market simultaneously. There is simply not enough buy-side demand to absorb the deluge, particularly from retail investors who have been burned repeatedly.” Velasquez estimates that approximately $4 billion worth of vested token unlocks will hit the market in the next six months alone, creating persistent downward pressure on the price of newly listed assets.

The structural mechanics of modern token launches compound the problem. Many projects now debut on exchanges with a combination of airdrop distributions, launchpool rewards, and market maker liquidity provisions that create an initial burst of trading activity followed by a rapid unwind. Airdrop recipients, who receive tokens for free or at minimal cost, often dump their allocations within the first 48 hours, converting speculative hype into tangible sell pressure. Data from on-chain intelligence platform Nansen shows that the average token experiences net outflows from airdrop wallets equivalent to 11 percent of its circulating supply in the first week of trading. “The airdrop model that was supposed to democratise token distribution has instead become a mechanism that front-runs genuine investors,” said Dr. Elena Vasquez, Head of Portfolio Management at Digital Asset Capital. “Retail buyers who enter on listing day are effectively providing exit liquidity to airdrop farmers who have zero intention of holding the asset.”

The damage to retail investor confidence is now quantifiable. A separate survey conducted by exchange aggregator CoinGecko found that 64 percent of crypto investors who purchased a new CEX listing in 2024 at or near the launch price are now sitting on losses, with 28 percent reporting that they have exited the market entirely for at least three months as a result. The psychological impact is especially pronounced among newer market participants who were drawn in by the promise of easy gains from high-profile listings. “We are witnessing the slow destruction of the retail listing narrative,” said Dr. Michael Linton, Chief Market Strategist at CryptoQuant. “There was a time, particularly in 2021, when a Binance or Coinbase listing could guarantee a 300 to 500 percent short-term pop. That era is behind us, and the adjustment is painful for those who built their strategies around it.” Linton noted that spot trading volumes on major exchanges have been declining year-over-year, even as the number of listed tokens surges, indicating that liquidity per token is thinning rapidly.

Institutional investors, who were once enthusiastic participants in new token launches, have begun to significantly recalibrate their approach. Multi-strategy crypto hedge funds now routinely skip the first week of trading for newly listed assets, preferring to build positions only after the initial volatility subsides and a clearer price discovery mechanism emerges. “We have a hard rule that we do not touch a token for at least 14 days after its CEX listing, and even then, we are extremely selective,” said Alexei Morozov, Chief Investment Officer at Fortis Digital, a $900 million digital asset hedge fund. “The data supports our caution. If you had bought every new CEX listing in 2024 at the opening price and held for one month, your portfolio would be down 38 percent. That is a catastrophic hit rate in any asset class.” Morozov’s fund now allocates less than 5 percent of its capital to tokens that have been listed on exchanges for fewer than 90 days, a dramatic reduction from the 20 percent allocation that was typical in the previous cycle.

The regulatory environment adds another layer of complexity. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and its global counterparts have increasingly signalled that tokens launched with concentrated insider allocations and aggressive exchange listing strategies may face scrutiny under securities laws. Professor Adrian Koh, a fintech regulation specialist at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, argues that the listing imbalance data strengthens the case for regulatory intervention. “When 88 percent of newly listed tokens are trading below their issuance price, there is a strong argument that these assets are being distributed in a manner that disadvantages public investors while benefiting insiders. Regulators will see this as evidence that the current listing framework lacks adequate price discovery and fair access provisions.” Koh predicts that the European Union’s MiCA framework and forthcoming U.S. legislation will impose stricter disclosure requirements on projects seeking exchange listings, including detailed breakdowns of insider allocations, vesting schedules, and market maker agreements.

The consequences of this listing drought are now feeding back into the primary market, where venture capital investment in early-stage crypto projects has cooled considerably. According to PitchBook data, crypto VC deal volume in Q1 2025 dropped 34 percent compared to the same period in 2024, as funds confront the reality that their portfolio companies will struggle to achieve favourable public market debuts. “The exit pathway is broken,” said Linda Xie, co-founder of Scalar Capital, in an interview earlier this week. “As a VC, you cannot justify investing at a $200 million valuation if the comparable tokens that listed last year are now trading at a fraction of their initial price. We are resetting our valuation expectations across the board.” This contraction in early-stage funding, while painful for founders, is widely viewed by market veterans as a necessary correction that will ultimately lead to healthier launch dynamics.

Historical comparisons offer some perspective on whether the current imbalance is cyclical or structural. In the 2018–2019 bear market, a similar pattern emerged where the vast majority of ICO tokens that listed on exchanges fell below their issuance price, a dynamic that eventually gave way to the explosive listings of the 2020–2021 bull run. However, analysts at Kaiko Research argue that this time is different, pointing to the sheer scale of token supply and the professionalisation of the airdrop farming industry as factors that make a broad-based listing recovery unlikely. “The market has matured in ways that work against the retail listing trade,” the Kaiko team wrote in a note to clients. “Liquidity is fragmented across dozens of exchanges both centralized and decentralized, market makers are more disciplined, and information asymmetry has narrowed. The 2021-style listing pop is not coming back in any sustainable form.”

Looking ahead, the data suggests that investors must radically rethink their approach to newly listed tokens. The era of passively buying every new CEX listing with the expectation of a short-term gain is over, replaced by a landscape where only projects with genuine product traction, sustainable tokenomics, and transparent distribution models can hope to maintain their value. Dr. Chen of Messari advises that “investors should demand far greater visibility into unlock schedules, insider allocation structures, and market maker agreements before deploying capital into a new listing. The exchange’s endorsement is no longer a substitute for thorough due diligence.” For the crypto market, this painful reckoning may ultimately be a healthy development, forcing the industry to abandon the extractive listing playbook that has enriched a select few at the expense of the broader public. The deep imbalance that the 12 percent statistic exposes is, at its core, a signal that the market is finally beginning to price risk with the severity it deserves.