83% of Tokens Listed on CEXs in 2025 Trade Below Launch Price - The Brutal Reality of Crypto Listings

Four out of five tokens that hit centralized exchanges this year can't hold their debut value. Welcome to the 2025 crypto market—where getting listed is just the starting gun for the race to the bottom.

The Launchpad Illusion

Exchange listings once meant guaranteed momentum. Now they're becoming graveyards for retail optimism. Projects burn through marketing budgets for that CEX spotlight, only to watch charts bleed out in the open market. The listing event itself has transformed from a liquidity catalyst into a liquidity test—and most tokens are failing it.

Supply Meets (Very Little) Demand

It's simple arithmetic masquerading as market dynamics. Exchanges keep ramping up listing volume to capture fees, flooding the market with tokens that have near-identical narratives. Meanwhile, fresh capital isn't entering fast enough to prop up this expanding universe of assets. The result? A brutal dilution of attention and investment across hundreds of projects fighting for the same shrinking pool of speculative dollars.

The Post-Listing Playbook Is Broken

Remember when teams would 'work on fundamentals' after listing? That playbook's gathering dust. Today's market cycles move too fast, and investors have the attention span of a hyperactive squirrel. Projects that should be building get trapped in endless price-defense campaigns instead—burning tokens, announcing empty partnerships, and chasing the next hype narrative just to maintain visibility.

Survival of the Fittest (and Best-Funded)

That remaining 17% isn't luck—it's liquidity war chests doing their job. The tokens holding above water share common traits: deeper reserves for market making, stronger vesting schedules that prevent immediate dumping, and teams that understand a CEX listing isn't a finish line but the first checkpoint in a marathon. Everyone else is just providing exit liquidity for early backers—the oldest trick in the traditional finance book, now dressed in crypto's disruptive clothing.

This isn't a market correction; it's a market education. Exchanges win on fees whether tokens sink or swim, VCs typically secure their returns before the public listing, and retail gets another masterclass in asymmetric risk. The brutal efficiency of these numbers might finally force the ecosystem to innovate beyond the 'list-and-pray' model. Or maybe we'll just see bigger marketing budgets next year.

Cayman Islands-based Gate.io is in “pole position” in terms of relative token performance for the year, with 18% of tokens trading above their listing price. MEXC comes second in the rankings with 15.59%, while Bybit and Bitget stand at 14.47% and 13.86%, respectively. 

US publicly listed company Coinbase and Seychelles’ KuCoin are clustered in the middle with 12.73% and 12.15% of tokens listed in them trading above their debut price levels. At the lower end, HTX posted 9.09%, OKX 8.62%, Crypto.com 6.67%, and Binance closed the class with just 6.06%.

CEXes trade high volumes, but token performance is gloomy

Looking at the positive against negative token launches chart shared by Cryptorank, performance leader MEXC has the largest number of underperforming assets, at 800 tokens, and fewer than 200 trading above the values they entered the market with. 

First in line in the previous category, Gate.io has about 500 tokens trading in the loss column and just over 100 above. KuCoin also has a pronounced imbalance in its ROI balances, having around 300 tokens with forgettable performance against a small number in positive territory.

Mid-tier exchanges Bitget is counting 250 tokens trading below listing price and only a few dozen above it, HTX and Bybit each record more than 100 tokens underwater, and lastly, Coinbase and Binance, though listing fewer tokens overall, still show a clear skew toward negative performance. 

Crypto market doom cloud came from Bitcoin’s uneven year

The cryptocurrency market this year has once again been a story of a bad Bitcoin performance, sharing the spoils with altcoins. The largest coin by market cap has declined by almost 8% year-to-date, which is why a majority of traders believe we are in a bear market. BTC has only ended the year in the red in 2014, 2018, and 2022, all recognized as bear years. 

October 10’s liquidation doomsday caused Bitcoin prices to tank by 10%, losing over $14,000 in a single session. “Gold acting like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is acting like a boomer stock. Boomer stocks are acting like memecoins. This is the worst timeline possible,” joked trader CryptoUB on X.

According to CryptoQuant contributor Woominkyu, Bitcoin’s cycle momentum BCMI index dropped to the 0.5 zone on October 21, which market watchers did not consider to be a cycle top. 

Since then, Bitcoin’s price and BCMI have gone down even further as markets reset price levels and sellers pour their coins back to the market. Woominkyu explained that during meaningful cycle bottoms like those in 2019 and 2023, the BCMI reached the 0.25–0.35 range. This could mean BTC will not likely sustain upward momentum till at least the first quarter of 2026.

At the time of this update, bitcoin is trading near $86,881 and is down just under 1% on the day. Early session attempts at recovery briefly pushed prices toward the $87,000–$89,000 range, but bulls failed to keep the charge going. 

A consolidation below the psychologically important $90,000 level is not what maxis asked for Christmas, and if downward pressure resumes, Bitcoin could test $84,000 or dip to the $82,000–$83,000 support levels. 

In other news, US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net outflows of $188.64 million on Tuesday, according to data from SoSoValue. The investment vehicle’s cumulative net inflows are now $57.08 billion, while total assets held in BTC funds stand at $114.29 billion, slightly above 6% of Bitcoin’s market capitalization.

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