Author: A Ray's New World, Blockbeats
Since October, listing on CEX has become a new subject of study. Whether it’s ACT, PNUT, or MOODNEG, countless people have become wealthy because of these new tokens being listed. Every batch of players pre-positioning these potential listed tokens holds their breath when CEX releases an announcement, hoping to be that lucky one.
However, in addition to pre-positioning, there is also a group of players like Little Z who focus on studying CEX announcements, forming a set of 'announcement trading' strategies. Little Z, with his understanding of CEX, not only successfully pre-positioned some potential listed targets (like CAT MOODNEG) but also gained considerable profits from announcements released by CEX (like PEPE, ACT, OL). Therefore, Blockbeats specially talked to Little Z about the lesser-known announcement trading.
Blockbeats: When did you start to pay attention to 'announcement trading'?
Little Z: I entered the market during the last bull cycle in 2021, and I can be considered an old player who has experienced a bull and bear cycle. In 2022, I saw an article by the founder of the formula on Zhihu, and inspired by Vida's article on Zhihu, I began to study CEX announcements. In fact, there are many opportunities in the announcements, but they are often overlooked. For example, in the last bull market, the listing effects of Binance and Coinbase were quite good, and many people profited significantly by pre-positioning, but some also chased after the announcement was made and could still achieve results.
Moreover, during the 2021 bull market, it wasn't like this round where there were many VC tokens. For instance, on certain CEXs, when they opened, there would be billions or tens of billions in market cap, and after listing, it would just be a matter of cutting leeks. At that time, many tokens had market caps of only a few million or tens of millions, so these 'announcement traders' could achieve considerable profits by pre-positioning. Some smart money would dig into some announcement testing loopholes, discovering and pre-positioning themselves early. At the same time, in this round, both Upbit and Binance had good listing effects, but it seems that not many people in the Chinese community are paying attention. I feel that this sector is still relatively untouched, so I started researching this area. However, the gameplay in this round is quite different from the previous round; this round's Coinbase listing effect is not as strong, and very few low market cap projects are being listed on exchanges.
Blockbeats: Can you give some examples of testing loopholes? And how does smart money discover these loopholes?
Little Z: Let me give you a few relatively simple loopholes. The first loophole is the negligence of engineers. Let's take a certain CEX as an example. CEX not only has a main webpage but also different announcement pages. For example, when it wants to issue some listing announcements, it will publish them on the announcement page. Thus, there will be many interfaces across different websites, and sometimes developers or testing engineers may overlook things. There might be news announcements that were expected to be released at 10 PM, but the webpage leaks early in the back end at 9:50 PM, and then 10 minutes later the official announcement comes out, which is a relatively common loophole.
Another example is the loophole of testing engineers. For instance, a certain CEX's testing engineer may like to use the same wallet repeatedly to test a certain chain's coins; for example, if CEX wants to test a Solana chain token B, and previously the engineer also tested token A. So this wallet might be one that the testing engineer has been using consistently. Some on-chain experts might capture the potential listing information by tracking these testing wallets.
Blockbeats: How do you view this round's Coinbase listing effect? Why is it much worse than the previous round?
Little Z: Coinbase's performance this round is indeed not as bright, and the beneficial effect is not as strong as in previous years. I think it's mainly because of regulatory reasons. However, there are still some tokens with good listing effects. For example, in the RWA sector, ONDO initially listed on Coinbase and then rose more than tenfold. Another one is AERO; Aerodrome Finance is a DEX on Base, and when it was first listed on Coinbase at the beginning of this year, it was only priced at 0.09, but after listing, it started to surge, peaking at 2.3 dollars, which is about a 20-fold increase from the bottom. Of course, this is also thanks to their relatively low market cap after listing; for instance, AERO initially had only a 10 million dollar market cap, making it easier to pump.
In addition to the low market cap opportunities mentioned above, there are also some high market cap opportunities, such as some meme tokens being listed. For example, PEPE surged by 50% after being listed on Coinbase not long ago. Of course, there are other factors involved, such as Upbit and Robinhood. However, meme tokens with higher market caps like WIF and FLOKI also saw increases of over 30% after being listed on Coinbase. Overall, while opportunities still exist, Coinbase's listing situation this round may be relatively average due to regulatory reasons. However, this round of the Coinbase bull market has set off waves of innovation from the base; if Ethereum is to be saved, the only savior is in the base ecosystem. All the interesting innovations in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as new concepts like AI pump.fun, are blooming and bearing fruit on the base, while other L2 chains are basically dead chains.
Blockbeats: What aspects of announcements are you currently researching the most?
Little Z: During the last bull market, I was still in a novice stage, just randomly researching, sometimes studying leverage, sometimes contracts, sometimes chain games. In fact, it was only during this round from 2023 to 2024 that I began to research announcement information. A friend of mine created a program for monitoring announcements similar to the formula news, which can monitor more CEX announcement information. In addition to a few top-tier CEXs, some second-tier CEXs are also being monitored.
After each CEX issues an announcement, I will study to see if there are any opportunities. I research the content of the announcement and its news effects and continuously review my findings. Gradually, I also learned about news trading, or what is now popularly referred to as trading based on news. For instance, everyone is familiar with the formula news, which made a million dollars in profits from ACT through such 'news trading'. Of course, the trading method of the formula requires some technology and is not suitable for everyone to apply. So I started to carefully study some manual trading opportunities, which are more friendly to players without much technology.
For example, there was a case of a16z's Eliza having a case of upper and lower case letter disputes. It actually follows the same logic as Neiro, but the latter was listed on top-tier CEXs; can it be replicated? I don’t think so. Eliza also had controversies around 'community' and 'conspiracy groups', with both sides fighting fiercely. At that time, the upper case ELIZA was being pulled much harder than the lower case, and many people rushed into the lower case based on the previous Neiro logic, resulting in many being trapped. At the time when the debate just started, I didn't jump in and kept observing. The decisive moment for this event was when I saw on HTX's announcement that HTX would list the lower case, so I started to get in. Because this indicated that CEX supported lower case tokens. As a result, the lower case indeed surpassed the upper case at last.
In fact, it's not just a few top-tier CEXs; the announcements from various CEXs contain hidden wealth codes, but need to be analyzed in conjunction with specific hot topics, the broader environment, and the fundamentals of the tokens.
Blockbeats: Can you provide us with more examples of 'announcement trading'?
Little Z: Of course. For example, there are many opportunities in the recent announcements on OKX. For instance, the token OL, I bought it at a price of 0.025 and sold it at 0.1, actually very few people pay attention to such opportunities. On November 18, OKX announced that the native token OL of Openloot would be listed for spot trading. The deposit time was set for 2 PM that afternoon, and the collective bidding time was from 8 PM to 9 PM on November 19, with the opening time at 9 PM. Most people stop reading here, or may not even click on the announcement. Let's take a look at the fundamentals of Openloot. Openloot is the NFT trading platform for the game bigtime, where users can use OL as a payment method when purchasing or renting high-end currencies like time crystals or buying NFTs from major sales. The initial circulation of OL is only 200 million tokens, while the total supply is 5 billion, which means the initial circulation rate is extremely low. The game token for bigtime was initially listed at a very low opening price. However, bigtime initially restricted trading for people from China, allowing them to trade only through API orders or by depositing bigtime into the exchange, so many people were unaware. It opened at 0.002 and rose dozens of times within a day.
So through research, I believe OL has the same genes as bigtime's low opening price in the past. Moreover, during the collective bidding phase on November 19, OL's collective bidding price was around 0.02 (it eventually opened at around 0.025). At an estimated price of 0.02, OL's circulating market value is only 4 million dollars. To take a step back, even if you didn't buy the cheap OL during the collective bidding, OL maintained a market value of around 10 million for a long time after opening, and the profit-loss ratio was still fully filled.
Another example is the recent Morpho. Although MORPHO's market cap is not as 'cheap' as OL, the opportunity still exists. First, still investigate the fundamentals of the project. MORPHO is an old DeFi project from 2021, and like OL mentioned above, it has a total supply of 1 billion tokens, but only 100 million in circulation, with a total market cap of about 100 million dollars. A market cap of 100 million dollars is neither high nor low, and does not appear to have a favorable profit-loss ratio in the eyes of most people. However, on November 21 from 5:05 PM to 6:05 PM, MORPHO started its collective bidding. The opening price during the bidding once reached 4 dollars, but on-chain, MORPHO initially floated only around 1 dollar. After seeing the bidding price, we had about an hour to withdraw coins on-chain and deposit them into the exchange. Even if the withdrawal speed was slow, it took 2 hours after the coin was listed to completely smooth out the price difference.
So the core is still to study CEX announcements, to study all CEX announcements, and see if there are any opportunities that are not easily discovered.
Blockbeats: After seeing each exchange's announcement, what strategies do you use to respond?
Little Z: You have to look at announcements from different types of exchanges. Some give you time to reflect; for example, the OL listing announcement we mentioned above was released two days in advance, allowing you to thoroughly research the token's fundamentals and information during those two days. For example, what is the cost of the initial circulating players, or how much of this token is locked and how much is actually circulated and sold? How much does each different exchange have? This type of announcement gives you ample time to research.
There is also a type of announcement that does not give you time to study; you need to be prepared in advance to pre-position. For example, when you see the announcement of the ACT token being listed on BN, you should immediately look at its fundamentals, such as market cap and where there is liquidity. Then, according to your strategy, quickly buy in. Usually, the beneficial effect of spot listings is far greater than that of futures. When you see that ACT has a market cap of only a few tens of millions, you should buy immediately because the profit-loss ratio is very favorable. Tokens that have already been listed with a market cap of a few tens of millions can be said to have a very high cost-performance ratio. At the same time, you should review and summarize why these tokens were listed and what their fundamentals are. What strategy should I take the next time I encounter a similar situation? However, such sudden announcements require quick reflexes. The formula news earned a lot through this method; after this ACT event, I believe everyone has started to gradually understand their trading methods. Some people even specifically follow their addresses.
In addition to spot announcements like ACT, there are also contract announcements. We usually think that the listing effect of spot markets is far greater than that of contracts. For example, MOODENG, before being listed, only had a market cap of 60 million and had been declining for a long time. Although this token only had a contract, its market cap was low enough and the fundamentals were very good at the time, so even listing on a contract still had a strong listing effect. If you bought MOODNE at the time, you might only lose up to 50%, but once it was listed on Binance spot, it could potentially have a 3-5 times increase, making the profit-loss ratio quite favorable. This type of trading is feasible, but if a token's market cap is already at five or six hundred million, then pre-positioning or anything else wouldn't be very suitable.
Blockbeats: What do you think about projects from other ecosystems? For example, the recently popular Desci concept.
Little Z: The narrative of Desci actually started to appear in 2022, but at that time it was during a bear market. The market had little liquidity then.
So this concept did not take off. During the bear market from 2022 to 2023, Coinbase's founder invested in a project called RSC and often promoted it on social media. For a long time, it had no significant noise, but suddenly in December last year, it exploded.
Then it fell silent for a long time until this year when BN announced investments in Bio, including some actions from CZ and Vitalik regarding Desci, which I won’t elaborate on here. These triggers have reignited the Desci concept this year. Desci definitely belongs to a relatively powerful narrative, but this narrative was pushed out by 'top flows' rather than naturally fermented from the masses. Such a strongly pushed concept is hard to say.
For example, some concepts led by Coinbase, Depin. The entire Depin sector is currently quite quiet; you basically see everyone discussing 'meme' and 'AI', and very few people talking about Depin. At that time, Coinbase listed many Depin tokens, such as MOBILE HONEY, and later BN also 'followed the trend' to list IO. However, such strongly promoted concepts may not necessarily receive market acceptance, and the results are already evident. Desci is also of this type, so I think everyone needs to do thorough research on Desci, wait for the right moment, and respond flexibly.
