New Binance listings: the median coin trails BTC by 72% after a year
A Binance listing is the moment a coin reaches the biggest exchange, often after months of hype. We bought every new coin listed since 2020 at the close of its first full trading day and compared it with holding BTC instead. 426 coins, including the ones later delisted: most of them lost ground from day one, and kept losing.
New Binance listings vs BTC, by days since listing
Median coin, return relative to BTCMiddle half of coins (25th–75th percentile)
Return relative to BTC = (1 + coin return) / (1 + BTC return) − 1 over the same days. The average is far above the median after a year: a few coins went up many times over, while most fell.
By listing year: median coin vs BTC after 90 days and after a year
Coins listed in 2026 have not had a full year yet
After 90 daysAfter 365 days
The last 90 days before a delisting, vs BTC
Median delisted coin, return relative to BTCMiddle half of coins
What it shows
The listing is usually the top, relative to BTC. A day after its first full day, the median new coin is already behind BTC. After a month it is about 26% behind, and after a year about 72%.
Winners exist but are rare. About 1 in 7 new coins beat BTC over its first year. Those few winners pull the average up, which is why "new listings pump" stories survive. The typical buyer does not get the average.
It has got worse. Not one of the 56 coins listed in 2024 beat BTC over its first year, and the median trailed by 88%. Many recent listings come with a large share of their supply still locked, and that supply is released into the market over the following months.
Delistings are slow, then sudden. Coins that end up delisted drift down against BTC for months, and then lose a further third or so in the last ten days. Binance announces delistings about a week ahead.
Delistings have picked up: .
Method
Listing = the first full UTC trading day of a coin's USDT pair, for pairs that appeared after mid-January 2020. Excluded: old coins that only got a new USDT pair (they had a BTC pair more than 30 days earlier), token swaps and renames, tokenized stocks, stablecoins and wrapped coins.
The entry is the close of that first full day, so the move on the listing day itself is not counted: this is "buy once it trades". A coin delisted later is held at its last price.
Delisting = the last day of a USDT pair that stopped trading at least a week before the data ends and did not move to a successor token. The 90-day path is measured from 90 days before that last day.
Prices are daily closes (UTC) from Binance 4-hour spot bars, with delisted pairs kept. No fees.
