Global Exchanges Become Graveyards for Newly Listed Coins, Has Upbit's Listing Pump Success Story Also Ended?

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As the asset holdings of global centralized exchanges, where major virtual assets such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and XRP (Ripple) are traded, expanded to $225.4 billion, it was found that 7 out of 10 newly listed coins experienced a price drop immediately after listing, requiring investors' special attention.

According to CoinGecko's report (2026 Spot CEX Report) distributed on April 9 (local time), stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) account for 66.6% of all trading pairs on the top 12 spot centralized exchanges, leading market liquidity. While non-stablecoin pairs account for 31.9% of the total 14,885 trading pairs on these top 12 exchanges, their actual trading volume share was confirmed to remain at around 23% at its peak.

In particular, the performance of newly listed tokens is abysmal. Among newly listed tokens on the top 12 exchanges, only about 32% maintained a positive price trend immediately after listing. South Korea's Upbit showed the highest initial performance, with 67% of tokens maintaining an upward trend for 30 days after listing, followed by Binance and OKX at 50%. However, analysis showed that even for Upbit, when entering the 300- to 329-day period, the price of all newly listed tokens fell below their initial listing price.

The underlying asset value of exchanges surged by approximately 69.6%, from $152.1 billion at the beginning of 2024 to $225.4 billion by the end of February 2026. Binance maintained its overwhelming lead by nearly doubling its reserves from $46.7 billion to $93.4 billion over the past two years. In contrast, despite Coinbase holding over 800,000 Bitcoins and ranking first in single-asset holdings, it experienced significant capital outflows of 20% and 41% from its Bitcoin and Ethereum reserves, respectively, due to increased regulation and price volatility.

The capital outflow from large institutions headed towards retail trader-focused small and medium-sized exchanges. A significant portion of the funds withdrawn from Coinbase and others were redeposited into exchanges like Bitget and MEXC, leading to explosive surges in their reserve values of 262.0% and 274.6%, respectively.

This movement of funds clearly illustrates the difference in how reserves are utilized based on the nature of the exchange. Exchanges with a high proportion of institutional investors and regulatory compliance, such as Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken, have a reserve-to-trading volume ratio of only around 0.1, primarily using reserves for custodial purposes. In contrast, relatively smaller exchanges with active retail trading, such as MEXC, HTX, and KuCoin, have ratios ranging from 1.44 to 2.04, indicating that actual trading occurs much more frequently relative to deposited assets.

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