Author: A Ray's New World, Blockbeats

 

Since October, listing coins on CEX has become a new field of study. Whether it's ACT, PNUT, or MOODNEG, countless people have become wealthy because of these new coins being listed. Every batch of players ambushing these potential listing coins holds their breath when CEX announces, hoping to be that lucky one.

However, besides ambushing in advance, there is also a group of players like Xiao Z who focus on studying CEX announcements and form a set of 'announcement trading' strategies. With his understanding of CEX, Xiao Z not only successfully ambushed some potential listing targets (like CAT MOODNEG) but also gained considerable profits after CEX announcements (like PEPE, ACT, OL). Thus, Blockbeats specifically chatted with Xiao Z about the lesser-known announcement trading.

Blockbeats: When did you start paying attention to 'announcement trading'?

Xiao Z: I entered the market during the last bull market in 2021, so I have experienced a round of bull and bear markets. In 2022, I saw an article by the founder of Equation on Zhihu and was inspired by Vida's article on Zhihu. I started researching CEX announcements. Actually, there are many opportunities in announcements, but often people overlook them. For example, in the last bull market, the listing effects of Binance and Coinbase were quite good; many people profited significantly by ambushing early, but some also managed to chase after the announcement was made and achieved results.

Moreover, during the bull market in 2021, there weren't as many VC coins as in this round's bull market. For example, on some CEXs, a listing would have a market cap of several hundred million or even billions, and after listing, it would just cut the retail investors. At that time, many coins were listed with market caps of only a few million or tens of millions, so these 'announcement traders' could make considerable profits by ambushing in advance. Some smart money would dig up some testing vulnerabilities in the announcements, discovering them ahead of time and ambushing. At the same time, in this round, Upbit and Binance's listing effects are also good, but it seems that not many people in the Chinese community are paying attention. I think this sector is still a blue ocean, so I started researching this area. However, the gameplay in this round is significantly different from the last; this round's Coinbase listing effect is not as strong, and there are very few low market cap projects being listed.

Blockbeats: Can you give some examples of testing vulnerabilities? How does smart money discover these vulnerabilities?

Xiao Z: Let me give a few simple examples of vulnerabilities. The first vulnerability is the negligence of engineers. Taking a certain CEX as an example, CEX has not only the main website but also different announcement websites. For example, if it wants to release some listing announcements, it will publish them on the announcement webpage. Therefore, there will be many interfaces on different websites; sometimes developers or testing engineers may make mistakes. For instance, a news announcement that was expected to be released at 10 PM might leak on the backend at 9:50 PM, and the official announcement comes out 10 minutes later; this is a common vulnerability.

Another example is the vulnerabilities of testing engineers. For instance, a testing engineer from a certain CEX might like to use the same wallet repeatedly to test a certain chain's coins. For example, when CEX wants to test a B token on the Solana chain, and the last time the engineer tested an A token. So this wallet might be one that the testing engineer has been using all along. Some experts on the chain can 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 weaker compared to the previous round?

Xiao Z: Coinbase's performance this round is indeed not so dazzling; the benefits are not as strong as in previous years. I think this is mainly due to regulatory reasons. However, there are also some coins with good listing effects. For example, ONDO in the RWA sector initially launched on Coinbase and then increased several times. Another is AERO, Aerodrome Finance is a DEX on base; when it launched on Coinbase at the beginning of this year, its price was only 0.09, and after it launched, it started to rally, reaching a high of 2.3 USD, which is about a 20-fold increase from the bottom. Of course, this is also thanks to its low market cap after listing; AERO initially had only a 10 million USD market cap, so it was easier to pump.

Besides the low market cap opportunities mentioned above, there are also some high market cap opportunities, such as meme coins that have been launched. For example, the PEPE coin surged by 50% after being listed on Coinbase recently. Of course, there are other factors involved, such as Upbit and Robinhood. However, meme coins like WIF and FLOKI also saw increases of over 30% after being listed on Coinbase. Overall, while opportunities still exist, this round's Coinbase listing effect might be relatively ordinary due to regulatory reasons. However, this bull market has stirred a wave of innovation from the base; if Ethereum still has a chance, the only savior lies within the base ecosystem. All the interesting innovations in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as AI pump.fun, are blossoming in the base, while other L2 chains are basically dead.

Blockbeats: What aspects of announcement research are you currently focusing on?

Xiao Z: During the last bull market, I was still in the stage of being a novice, just blindly researching, sometimes researching leverage, sometimes researching contracts, and sometimes researching chain games and meme coins. In fact, I only started researching announcement information during this round from 2023 to 2024. My friend developed a program similar to Equation News that can monitor more CEX announcement information. In addition to a few leading CEXs, there are also some second-tier CEXs that are being monitored.
After each CEX issues an announcement, I will study to see if there are any opportunities. I will analyze the content of the announcement and its news effect, and continuously review my findings. Slowly, I also understood news trading, or what is now popularly called event-driven trading. For instance, everyone is familiar with Equation News, which profited a million USD from ACT through this 'news trading'. Of course, Equation's trading method requires some technology and is not suitable for everyone to apply this strategy. So I started to carefully study some manual trading opportunities that are more friendly to players without any technology.

For example, there was previously a case with a16z's eliza regarding case sensitivity. In fact, it has the same logic as neiro, but the latter was listed on leading CEXs; can this be replicated? I don't think so. Eliza also has controversies regarding 'community' and 'conspiracy groups', with both sides fighting fiercely. At that time, uppercase ELIZA surged much more than lowercase, and many people relied on the logic of neiro from before and rushed into the lowercase, leading to many getting stuck. I did not enter at the beginning of the debate; I was observing. What finally confirmed it for me was when I saw on HTX's announcement that HTX would list the lowercase, so I began to enter the market. This indicated that CEX supported lowercase tokens. As a result, the lowercase did indeed surpass the uppercase.
In fact, it is not just the top few CEXs; the announcements from various CEXs hide wealth codes, but it needs to be combined with specific hotspots, the macro environment, token fundamentals, and other situations, analyzing each case specifically.

Blockbeats: Can you introduce a few more examples of 'announcement trading'?

Xiao Z: Of course, I can. For example, there have been many opportunities in the recent announcements on OKX. For instance, I bought the OL token at a price of 0.025 and sold it at 0.1; in fact, very few people noticed such opportunities. On November 18, OKX announced that it would launch the native token OL for spot trading. The open deposit time was at 2 PM that afternoon, the aggregation auction time was from 8 PM to 9 PM on November 19, and the opening time was at 9 PM. Most people see this and may stop there, or they might not even click on the announcement. Let's take a look at Openloot's fundamentals. Openloot is the NFT trading platform for the game bigtime, and users can use OL as a payment method when purchasing or renting high-end currencies like time crystals or buying NFTs from major sales. OL's initial circulation was only 200 million tokens, while the total supply is 5 billion, making the initial circulation rate extremely low. The bigtime game token had a very low opening price when it first listed. However, bigtime initially restricted regions, not allowing Chinese people to trade, and you could only trade by placing orders through the API or by depositing bigtime into the exchange, so many people didn't know about it. It opened at 0.002, and after one day, it rose dozens of times.
So after research, I believe OL has the genes of a previous big time low opening. Meanwhile, during the aggregation auction phase on November 19, OL's auction price was around 0.02 (it ultimately opened at around 0.025). Based on an estimate of 0.02, OL's circulating market cap was only 4 million USD. Even if you didn't buy the cheaply priced OL during the auction, OL maintained a market cap of about 10 million for a long time after opening, and the risk-reward ratio was still maximized.

Another example is the recent Morpho. Although MORPHO's market cap is not as 'cheap' as OL, opportunities still exist. First, it is essential to research the project's fundamentals. MORPHO is an old DeFi project from 2021, just like OL, with a total supply of 1 billion tokens, but only 100 million tokens in circulation, with a total market cap of about 100 million USD. A 100 million USD market cap is neither high nor low, and in most people's eyes, it lacks a risk-reward ratio. However, on November 21 at 5:05-6:05 PM, MORPHO began its aggregation auction. The opening auction price once reached as high as 4 USD, while initially, on the chain, MORPHO was only floating around 1 USD. After seeing the auction price, we had about an hour to withdraw tokens from the chain and deposit them into the exchange. Even if the withdrawal speed was slow, there were still about 2 hours after listing before the price difference was completely smoothed out.

So the core is still to research CEX announcements, to study all CEX announcements, and to see if there are any opportunities that are not easily noticed.

Blockbeats: What strategies do you employ in response to each exchange announcement?

Xiao Z: You need to look at different types of exchange announcements; some reflect the timeline. For instance, the OL new listing announcement we discussed earlier was released two days in advance, giving you ample time to research the coin's fundamentals and information. For example, what is the opening circulation of gold diggers or what was the cost for early investors? Additionally, how much of the coin is locked and how much is actually circulating for sale? How many of these exist across different exchanges? Announcements of this type give you sufficient time to study.

There is another type of announcement that doesn't give you time to research, and you need to be prepared in advance for ambush. For example, when the ACT coin launched on BN, as soon as you see this announcement, you should immediately check its fundamentals, such as market cap, where there is liquidity, etc. Then quickly buy according to your own strategy. Typically, the benefits of spot trading far outweigh those of futures. When you see that ACT's market cap is only a few tens of millions, you should buy immediately because the risk-reward ratio is very favorable. A listing with a market cap of several tens of millions can be considered quite cost-effective. At the same time, you should review and summarize, such as why these coins were launched and what their fundamentals are. What strategy should I adopt the next time I encounter a similar situation? However, such sudden announcements require quick reflexes. For instance, the Equation News has made a lot through this method, and after the ACT incident, I believe everyone is gradually starting to understand their trading methods. Some people even specifically follow their addresses.

Besides spot announcements like ACT, there are also contract announcements. Typically, we believe that the listing effect of spot trading far exceeds that of contract listings. For instance, MOODENG had a market cap of only 60 million before listing and had been in a prolonged downtrend. Although this coin was only a contract, its market cap was low enough, and its fundamentals were very good at the time, so even if it was listed as a contract, it had a strong listing effect. If you bought MOODNE at that time's market cap, you might only lose 50%, but once it was listed on Binance's spot, it could potentially see a 3-5 times increase, providing a considerable risk-reward ratio. This kind of play is feasible, but if a coin's market cap is already several hundred million, then ambushing in advance or any strategy is not very suitable.

Blockbeats: What do you think of projects from other ecosystems? For example, the recently popular Desci concept.

Xiao Z: The Desci narrative actually started appearing in 2022, but it was during a bear market. At that time, the market had very little liquidity.
So this concept did not take off. During the bear market from 2022 to 2023, the founder of Coinbase invested in a project called RSC, and he often promoted his project on social media. For a long time, there was no significant response, 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 by CZ and V God in Bangkok regarding Desci, which I won't elaborate on here. Because of these opportunities, the Desci concept has become popular again this year. Desci definitely belongs to a powerful narrative; however, this narrative was pushed out by 'top influencers' rather than naturally fermented from the masses. Such strongly promoted concepts are hard to predict.

For instance, some concepts led by Coinbase, Depin. The entire Depin sector is currently quite quiet; you basically see everyone talking about 'meme' and 'AI', and very few are discussing Depin. At that time, Coinbase listed many Depin tokens, such as MOBILE HONEY, and later BN also 'followed suit' to list IO. However, such strongly promoted concepts may not necessarily resonate with the market, and the results are already visible. This is also the case with Desci, so I believe that Desci requires thorough research, waiting for the right moment, and being flexible.