Play with Binance Alpha, short-term speculation or long-term value investment?

Author: Nan Zhi, Odaily Planet Daily

Since Binance launched Binance Alpha on December 18, a total of 38 tokens have been listed. The first phase saw most of the tokens being high market cap tokens, resulting in relatively insignificant price increases; however, the fifth phase's WHALES experienced significant increases due to their very small market cap. So how should one invest?

In this article, we will answer several questions through detailed data:

• What is the short-term listing effect?

• What is the medium to long-term listing effect?

• Are there different price fluctuation patterns across different chains?

• Is there a correlation between the listing effect and market cap?

Data Overview

The 5-minute price changes, 1-hour price changes, and cumulative price changes since listing for the 38 tokens in the six phases of Binance Alpha are shown in the table below. All price data comes from TradingView's 5-minute candlestick chart; market cap is the circulating market cap from CoinGecko.

To objectively compare whether the cumulative price changes outperform the overall market, this article selects three tokens as reference objects: arc on Solana, VIRTUAL on Base, and BTC. (Note: PSTAKE was omitted here as no sufficiently liquid trading pairs could be found, resulting in significant price volatility.)

What is the short-term listing effect?

From the table above, we can see that the average 5-minute price changes from the first to the sixth phase are all positive, at 14%, 23%, 18%, 5%, 22%, and 0%, respectively. This indicates that Binance Alpha does have a short-term listing effect, but it is certainly much less significant compared to Binance's own platform. For reference, the average 5-minute listing effect of Moonshot is about 30%, which is relatively close.

However, further analysis shows that the short-term price increases are mainly contributed by one or two standout tokens, while most tokens have negligible price increases.

The following chart shows the price changes in three different time periods, clearly indicating that the red sections (5-minute price increases) have a few standout bars, but most price increases are very small.

What is the medium to long-term listing effect?

Using the 1-hour closing price as a reference, the table shows that most tokens maintain positive price increases (green bars above the 0 axis) one hour after listing.

Considering users who may not buy quickly, comparing the 1-hour closing price to the 5-minute closing price (where green bars below red bars indicate relative declines), the relative price changes for the six phases are -10%, -7%, 3%, -3%, 4%, and 4%. This means that if you buy in too late, you may get stuck in the mid-term.

How does the long-term performance look? The blue bars in the chart clearly show that after listing on Binance Alpha, these tokens have significantly better long-term price increases compared to short-term increases. For most users, it is more suitable to first research which projects are of high quality after listing, then wait for a pullback to buy in and anticipate long-term gains.

Is the long-term price increase driven by the overall upward trend in the crypto market, or is there indeed an influence from the platform? Through the three comparison groups of arc, VIRTUAL, and BTC, we can see that the overall market was in a downward trend during the first three batches of listings, yet the listed tokens still had positive price increases. Therefore, overall, listing on Binance Alpha is indeed a long-term benefit for tokens.

Do different chains exhibit different price fluctuation patterns?

Organizing by chain, the data tables and bar charts are shown below. The differences among the chains are very obvious; Ethereum leads significantly in 5-minute price changes, while Base is the weakest; in terms of long-term price increases, Solana is far ahead, with the other three chains showing little difference.

The data for Solana chain tokens is as follows. Overall, the 5-minute and 1-hour price changes show little difference, while the long-term price increase is far ahead, making it possibly the most suitable chain to participate in Binance Alpha.

The data for Ethereum is shown below. The differences in 5-minute and 1-hour price changes are relatively larger compared to Solana. The average 5-minute price increase is 24%, and the average 1-hour price increase is 17%, but the cumulative price increase since listing is only 24%. Ethereum requires extremely high gas costs to secure a favorable position in the short term, but the overall price increase is not significant, making it currently the least valuable to participate in.

The data for BNB Chain is shown in the chart below. The differences between the 5-minute and 1-hour price changes further expand, but it can be seen that the tokens with the best long-term price increases (purple bars) are those with relatively small 1-hour price increases.

The data for Base is shown below, with the main contributors to price increases being LUNA and ODOS. The sample size is small, making it difficult to clarify the underlying patterns for now.

Is there a correlation between the listing effect and market cap?

Arranged in ascending order of market cap, the data for each time period is shown in the chart below. It is clear that the tokens with the most significant short-term price increases are all small-cap tokens, but they also experience the most significant declines after one hour. The long-term price increases do not show a clear correlation with market cap.