Today, ten coins were bundled and delisted by Binance, with the worst performer being $PHB. It dropped from $0.05 to $0.015—a 70% decline.
Let me break down this cautionary tale.
$PHB is Pink Bourbon, originally called Red Pulse Phoenix, and it used to make AI analysis reports for the APAC market. It also got some buzz during the 2018 bull run. The problem is that this kind of project has a fatal weakness: what it sells isn’t infrastructure or liquidity—it’s content. Content-based projects are the hardest to survive in a bear market because users can choose not to buy at any time, and competitors are plentiful with low barriers to entry.
Look at another indicator: daily trading volume. Over the past three months, $PHB’s average daily trading value has been below $200K. That’s a dangerous signal.
Binance has clear listing maintenance standards, and trading volume is one of them. If it stays below the threshold for more than a certain period, it enters a review period. If it doesn’t improve, it gets delisted. This isn’t a sudden ambush—it’s based on publicly stated rules, although most people don’t read the announcements.
In today’s batch, other delisted coins include $BETA (DeFi lending, down 64%) and $VIB (copyright music, down 63%), as well as six other older projects—some involved building an IoT chain, some building cross-chain bridges. One common thread: they’re all old projects from 2017–2021. They tried to find new narratives but didn’t succeed, and they continued to qualify for listing mostly on inertia.
That’s the crypto market’s elimination mechanism. It’s not that the team ran away or that they issued fake news—often it’s just quietly being eliminated by the market.
So what’s the lesson?
It’s not “don’t buy small caps.” Instead, you should check whether the project has ongoing user activity and trading volume to support it. Trading volume is a proxy for a project’s vitality—once the volume disappears, listing eligibility will be gone sooner or later.
For the people holding these coins, the loss has already happened. Next time you encounter a project with long-term shrinking trading volume, make the call earlier.
Let me break down this cautionary tale.
$PHB is Pink Bourbon, originally called Red Pulse Phoenix, and it used to make AI analysis reports for the APAC market. It also got some buzz during the 2018 bull run. The problem is that this kind of project has a fatal weakness: what it sells isn’t infrastructure or liquidity—it’s content. Content-based projects are the hardest to survive in a bear market because users can choose not to buy at any time, and competitors are plentiful with low barriers to entry.
Look at another indicator: daily trading volume. Over the past three months, $PHB’s average daily trading value has been below $200K. That’s a dangerous signal.
Binance has clear listing maintenance standards, and trading volume is one of them. If it stays below the threshold for more than a certain period, it enters a review period. If it doesn’t improve, it gets delisted. This isn’t a sudden ambush—it’s based on publicly stated rules, although most people don’t read the announcements.
In today’s batch, other delisted coins include $BETA (DeFi lending, down 64%) and $VIB (copyright music, down 63%), as well as six other older projects—some involved building an IoT chain, some building cross-chain bridges. One common thread: they’re all old projects from 2017–2021. They tried to find new narratives but didn’t succeed, and they continued to qualify for listing mostly on inertia.
That’s the crypto market’s elimination mechanism. It’s not that the team ran away or that they issued fake news—often it’s just quietly being eliminated by the market.
So what’s the lesson?
It’s not “don’t buy small caps.” Instead, you should check whether the project has ongoing user activity and trading volume to support it. Trading volume is a proxy for a project’s vitality—once the volume disappears, listing eligibility will be gone sooner or later.
For the people holding these coins, the loss has already happened. Next time you encounter a project with long-term shrinking trading volume, make the call earlier.