2025 South Korea CEX Listing Review: Investing in New Tokens = 70% Loss?

Original Compilation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

Core Conclusions

If $100 was invested in each of the 59 tokens newly listed with KRW trading pairs on Upbit in 2025, as of March 11, 2026, the value of this portfolio would be only 31% of the original investment (i.e., each dollar has fallen to $0.31). Bithumb (144 tokens) performed identically, also at 31%; Binance (92 tokens) was slightly lower at 29%. All three exchanges resulted in approximately a 70% loss of assets.

Among the 59 tokens listed on Upbit, only two ultimately turned a profit: KITE (up 232.8%) and BARD (up 9.3%). Bithumb performed slightly better, with 8 out of 144 tokens maintaining positive returns. The median return on Upbit was -80.9%, while on Bithumb it was -82.1%.

The average return for the 50 tokens listed on both major Korean exchanges (-69.4%) was almost identical to that of the 94 tokens listed only on Bithumb (-68.9%). This data indicates that listing on multiple major exchanges does not guarantee subsequent price performance.

Research Background

The inspiration for this analysis came from a data chart published today by Messari research analyst @Degenerate_DeFi.

Data Source: @Degenerate_DeFi

The chart shows that if $100 was invested in each of the 92 tokens newly listed on Binance in 2025, as of today, each dollar invested is worth only $0.29. This means that out of a total investment of $9,200, the cumulative loss reached 71.7%, leaving a remaining value of only about $2,600.

As the world’s largest 暗号currency exchange by trading volume, Binance’s listing standards are generally considered stricter than those of smaller platforms, and its liquidity advantage is unparalleled. If Binance’s data shows such performance, what about Korean exchanges? The Korean market is dominated by retail investors, and its trading patterns differ significantly from the global market. Do these differences affect the performance of newly listed tokens? Or will the data ultimately reveal similar patterns?

This article will adopt the same methodology as the Binance analysis to systematically analyze all tokens that gained KRW trading pairs on Upbit and Bithumb throughout 2025.

Research Methodology

Scope Definition and Screening Criteria

This study covers all tokens that newly gained KRW market trading pairs on Upbit and Bithumb between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2025. This includes 59 tokens on Upbit and 144 tokens on Bithumb. For Elixir (ELX), Strike (STRIKE), and AI16Z, which were listed in 2025 but have since been delisted, this study treats them as complete losses.

The investment simulation rules follow the unified framework used by Messari to analyze the performance of Binance listings. We assume an investment of $100 at the closing price on the first day of listing for each token and hold until now without any selling. By tracking the cumulative value and return rate of this portfolio daily, a time-series dataset is constructed.

Choosing the closing price on the first day as the entry point was a deliberate decision. On Korean exchanges, the opening price on the first day is often significantly inflated due to high volatility and speculative buying. Using the closing price effectively filters out this short-term noise.

Data Collection

Price data was obtained directly through the public REST APIs of each exchange. For Upbit, we used the daily candlestick interface to collect complete daily OHLCV data for each token from its listing date until March 11, 2026, and cross-verified current prices using the ticker interface (/v1/ticker). For Bithumb, the 24-hour candlestick interface was used to obtain data for the same period. To simplify the model, this study did not consider exchange rate fluctuations between USD and KRW.

Overall Performance

The chart below visually presents the simulation results. Subsequent sections will provide detailed interpretation and analysis of this data.

Comparison of the Three 交換s

The performance comparison of tokens newly listed on the three major exchanges in 2025 is as follows:

All three exchanges recorded losses of approximately 70%. Upbit (-69.5%) and Bithumb (-69.1%) performed almost identically, with Binance (-71.7%) also being very close. Regardless of which exchange was chosen, investors who bought new tokens at their first-day closing price lost an average of about 70% of their initial capital.

Characteristics of Return Distribution

The overall average is insufficient to reveal the differences in individual token performance. The following examines the returns of each token in detail by interval:

On both exchanges, over 40% of tokens were concentrated in the loss range of -75% to -90%. On Upbit, this interval accounted for 46%, with an additional 9 tokens (15%) suffering extreme losses exceeding 90%. Only two tokens ultimately achieved positive returns: Kite (KITE, up 232.8%) and Lombard (BARD, up 9.3%).

Bithumb’s return distribution was more dispersed. It had a larger number of profitable tokens, totaling 8, but also had 33 tokens that suffered extreme losses exceeding 90%. This dispersion is partly due to the larger sample size of 144 tokens but also reflects that Bithumb’s listing strategy covers a wider range of project types compared to Upbit.

The median return reveals a more severe reality: -80.9% for Upbit and -82.1% for Bithumb, both lower than their respective averages. This indicates that a few relatively resilient tokens pulled up the overall average, and the typical performance of newly listed tokens is actually bleaker than the surface data suggests.

The Impact of Listing Timing on Performance

To examine whether listing timing affects subsequent performance, we divided the data into two periods for comparison: the first half (January to June) and the second half (July to December).

The data shows that tokens listed in the second half performed better on both exchanges. This phenomenon aligns with intuition: tokens listed earlier in the year experienced a longer downtrend. Considering the overall crypto market was in a downtrend throughout 2025, the longer the holding period, the higher the natural probability of accumulating greater losses.

It is noteworthy that the magnitude of the performance gap between the two halves is quite significant. On Bithumb, the difference in returns between tokens listed in the first half (-77.3%) and those listed in the second half (-59.4%) is about 18 percentage points, a gap that is difficult to explain by time factor alone. Possibilities include: tokens listed in the second half indeed had stronger fundamental support, or market expectations had become more rational due to the lessons learned in the first half.

The Paradox of Choice

The Relationship Between Listing Quantity and Performance

Throughout 2025, Upbit added 59 new KRW trading pairs, while Bithumb added 144. Bithumb’s listing count is more than double that of Upbit and also significantly exceeds Binance’s 92. Upbit is known for having the strictest listing standards among Korean exchanges. However, despite the vast difference in listing quantities, the portfolio returns for the two exchanges were almost identical: -69.5% for Upbit and -69.1% for Bithumb.

Analysis of Cross-Listed トークンs

To delve deeper, we further compared the performance of tokens listed on both exchanges versus tokens listed only on Bithumb. The data shows that 50 tokens were listed on both Upbit and Bithumb.

Logically, projects capable of listing on both major exchanges should possess a certain degree of industry recognition. However, the average return of these 50 tokens (-69.4%) is almost exactly the same as that of the 94 tokens listed only on Bithumb (-68.9%).

This finding points to the following two conclusions:

First, listing on multiple major exchanges does not provide any guarantee for subsequent price performance.

Second, the first-day price inflation triggered by a listing event is a structural phenomenon, and its occurrence is unrelated to how much attention the project itself receives.

Regardless of whether a token had the “honor” of being listed on both Upbit and Bithumb or quietly landed only on Bithumb, the losses ultimately borne by first-day buyers showed no significant difference.

Analysis of the Few Survivors

Among the 59 tokens listed on Upbit, only KITE (up 232.8%) and BARD (up 9.3%) ultimately achieved positive returns. Only 8 tokens limited their losses to within 50%.

Bithumb’s 8 profitable tokens constitute a more diverse sample.

KITE recorded a 209.6% gain, a significant outlier. However, it should be noted that this token has only been listed for four months, and interpreting its performance as a sustainable long-term outcome is premature. STABLE and DEXE also require cautious consideration due to their mere three-month tracking record.

The case of PAXG is more instructive. As a token pegged 1:1 to the spot price of gold, its 69.0% gain was entirely driven by the steady rise in gold prices throughout 2025. This performance has no connection to cryptocurrency market fundamentals; it is merely a reflection of the macro gold trend. In other words, the most reliable way to achieve a profit on Bithumb turned out to be not investing in cryptocurrency projects themselves.

結論

This study concludes that the performance of tokens newly listed on Korean exchanges in 2025 is not fundamentally different from that of Binance at a structural level. Although the Korean market is characterized by a high proportion of retail participation, exchanges have different listing strategies, and the regulatory environment varies, the average loss for first-day buyers across all three major exchanges converges around 70%.

We believe the core insight revealed by this data is that the root cause lies not in the listing standards of a specific exchange, nor in the quality of individual tokens, but in the inherent structural dynamics of the listing event itself. When a token is newly listed on a major exchange, concentrated retail demand pushes up the price on the first day. Over time, the price naturally regresses, causing first-day buyers to incur losses. The similar performance of tokens listed on both major exchanges and those listed on only one further confirms that these losses are not due to a specific exchange or token, but are a structural feature of the listing event.

It should be noted that this study measures the performance of one specific strategy: buying at the first-day closing price and holding until now. Strategies that utilize short-term price fluctuations in the days following listing, or strategies that enter after a significant price correction, might yield completely different conclusions. However, such strategies require extremely precise timing and are far removed from the actual behavior of most retail investors.

The data from 2025 provides a clear lesson: buying a token simply because it is newly listed on a major exchange is a systematically losing strategy, regardless of which exchange is chosen. This phenomenon is not unique to the Korean market but is a global structural issue. The reason is not that exchanges are selecting inferior projects, but that the listing event itself creates a dynamic of concentrated demand that is consistently disadvantageous to first-day buyers.

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