Reading the data · · 7 min read
What does price do after a listing? Binance and Upbit data
Of the 157 coins newly listed on Binance's spot market between January 2024 and October 2026, the median coin traded 36.1% below its first-hour close 30 days later, and only 23% were up at the end of those 30 days. An Upbit announcement of a listing on its Korean won (KRW) market, on the other hand, lifted the price of coins already trading on Binance by a median 20.7% within the first 5 minutes, but most of that gain was gone within 30 days.
This article explains the rules Sezga used to measure these two events, what the numbers show and what they don't.
How was it measured?
Two separate events were measured. All prices come from candles on Binance's USDT pairs.
- Binance spot launch: coins named in a Binance "Will List" announcement or in a HODLer Airdrops, Launchpool or Megadrop introduction, for which a USDT pair was opened. Renames and token swaps (an old coin continuing under a new name) were not counted. The start of trading is the first hourly candle of the USDT pair.
- Upbit KRW announcement: coins that were already trading on Binance spot at the moment Upbit published an announcement adding a new coin to its KRW market.
The measurement follows four rules:
- Base price: for Binance, the close of the first trading hour; for Upbit, the Binance price in the minute of the announcement. The price in the opening minute is not a realistic entry price: in those minutes the order book is very thin and the price jumps sharply.
- Delisted coins included: the 3 coins that Binance later removed were counted as well. Looking only at coins that are still trading makes the result look better than it is. This is called survivorship bias.
- Median, not average: the median is the value with half of the events above it and half below. A few coins rising 500% make the average meaningless but barely move the median. The "middle half" is the range that holds the middle 50% of events (the 25th to 75th percentiles).
- Comparison with BTC: for each event, what Bitcoin did over the same time window was measured too. The "vs. BTC" column is the median of the difference between the coin's change and BTC's change, given in percentage points (pts).
Binance spot listings: the first 30 days
| When | Median | Share up | Middle half | vs. BTC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First-hour high (vs. first-hour close) | +24.8% | — | +14.3% to +51.2% | — |
| After 24 hours | −8.1% | 34% | −21.3% to +4.2% | −8.7 pts |
| After 7 days | −21.2% | 26% | −37.9% to +0.4% | −20.2 pts |
| After 30 days | −36.1% | 23% | −53.9% to −4.8% | −35.7 pts |
| Lowest point within 7 days | −29.9% | — | −45.1% to −17.5% | — |
The first row of the table says this: the highest price seen in the first hour of trading was a median 24.8% above that hour's close. The excitement of the open is not a guide to the price in the hours that follow.
The distribution is heavily skewed. After 30 days, 6 of 156 coins had more than doubled in value, while 50 had lost more than half. Someone looking at the average sees a few big winners; someone looking at the median sees what a typical listing did.
The BTC column shows that the decline did not come from the broader market. Even after subtracting BTC's change over the same 30-day windows, the median gap is 35.7 points.
By year
| Year | Listings | 7-day median | 30-day median |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 52 | −13.8% | −24.0% |
| 2025 | 85 | −27.5% | −44.3% |
| 2026 (through October) | 20 | −17.9% | −37.1% |
The median is negative in all three years. The size of the drop, however, varies with market conditions. The 2026 row rests on only 20 listings, so it is less reliable.
This data does not show the cause. Commonly cited possible explanations include: people who received tokens through airdrops selling in the first days, launches with a small circulating supply and a high valuation, gains that already happened before the listing on other exchanges or in pre-market trading, and initial interest fading over time.
Upbit KRW announcements: the move within minutes
When Upbit, one of South Korea's largest exchanges, announces that it will add a coin to its KRW market, buying interest in Korea reaches the Binance price within minutes through arbitrage traders. The table below shows the Binance price of the 85 coins that were already trading on Binance at the moment of the announcement.
| When | Median | Share up | Middle half | vs. BTC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| After 5 minutes | +20.7% | 100% | +10.0% to +52.8% | — |
| First-hour high | +41.5% | — | +26.8% to +81.6% | — |
| After 1 hour | +25.2% | 99% | +11.8% to +43.8% | — |
| After 24 hours | +7.9% | 80% | +1.1% to +35.1% | +10.8 pts |
| After 7 days | +3.4% | 60% | −6.0% to +18.7% | +4.5 pts |
| After 30 days | −2.1% | 45% | −24.0% to +19.5% | −7.0 pts |
Almost all of the move happens in the first minutes: in all 85 events the price was above the base 5 minutes later. The gap between the first-hour high and the price 24 hours later, however, is large. This means a purchase made minutes after the announcement may already have missed the first wave. After 30 days, more than half of the coins were below the base price.
By year, the 30-day median was +8.6% in 2024 (15 events), −4.6% in 2025 (42 events) and −2.9% in 2026 through October (28 events).
What does this data not tell you?
- It is not a signal. It shows the historical distribution; it does not say that the next listing will behave the same way.
- Real trading costs are not included. Fees, slippage (an order filling at a different price than expected) and the thin liquidity of the first minutes were not taken into account.
- The sample is limited. The Upbit measurement covers only coins that were trading on Binance at the time; how coins not on Binance react to Upbit is not included here.
- Market conditions matter. The differences between years show that the same event can produce different results in different periods.
How to follow it on the Sezga terminal
- Radar page, "What happened after listing?" card: the measurement in this article is updated here every day. The 24-hour, 7-day and 30-day results of new listings are added as each period runs its course.
- Listing radar: the pair lists of Binance, Bybit, OKX, Coinbase and Upbit are compared every few minutes. A coin shows up when it enters an exchange for the first time.
- Exchange announcements and event memory: Binance and Upbit announcements land in the live feed. What the price did 5 minutes, 1 hour and 24 hours after each event is recorded.
Key takeaways
- For the 157 coins newly listed on Binance from January 2024 to October 2026, the median change 30 days after the first-hour close was −36.1%; the share still up was 23%.
- The first-hour high was a median 24.8% above that hour's close; opening prices are not a guide to the days that follow.
- An Upbit KRW announcement lifted the Binance price by a median 20.7% in the first 5 minutes; after 30 days, the median change was −2.1%.
- The distributions are very wide, and a few big winners distort the average, which is why the median and the middle half were used.
- These figures measure the past; on their own, they are not enough for an investment decision.