The other day I saw teacher Spark ask: Why do current non-chain meme launch projects have to have high valuations and cannot be 100% unlocked? Then I dug a hole for myself, and today we will fill this hole: First of all, let me say the conclusion: It’s not that the project party is unwilling, but because they can’t, or at least they can’t have low valuations. Let me tell you something that no one believes but is actually true: this year, many projects listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (including the two largest exchanges in the universe, CB, and the Korea Exchange) are currently losing money on the listing of coins. Among them, there are projects that are recognized by everyone as having great community consensus, and there are also projects that say "Ah? This shit can also be listed." Then let us define what "losses on the Shanghai Stock Exchange" means: the actual income from the project team through cashing out on the exchange (including reduction of holdings and contracts) - the cost of listing/promotion/development/relationships < 0 Of course, their current losses do not mean that they will also lose money in the future. What I want to say is that the listing is far from the profit that retail investors think. From the perspective of the Dev team, if you set up a business now and aim to list on Binance, what is the profit you can get: 1. Dividends from the project turnover minus operating costs (provided that you are a profitable DeFi) 2. The percentage of the team allocation minus the hidden costs 3. You can try but it is actually difficult to get a lot of airdrops (the reasons are below) So, what is the cost? - Compliance and development costs before listing - Much higher data acquisition costs than before: That is, the money that the profiteers get. At present, in the assessment of listing, data is no longer a big issue, but a multi-dimensional thing. After evaluating TVL, they said your user activity is not enough, and you don’t move the money after you save it; after evaluating revenue, they said your data is too single, and your community is not popular enough... In order to complete the listing, the project party had to open up a large budget and give Kaito/Big Exchange Wallet/Alpha/Professional Coin Community a better nominal profit margin-Exchange marketing tokens: This is almost no secret. Alpha’s activity tokens require 1.5-2%, and the spot tokens of several big exchanges need to double the ratio-Liquidity pool costs and exchange margins: Each item ranges from millions to several million US dollars-Channel costs: Not every project party has direct access to the decision-makers of big exchanges. This is the same as traditional listings, which is an opaque market in itself. Therefore, the project party must reserve a % in the team or community share that they cannot clearly estimate at the beginning - Anti-black cost: Yes, in many cases, the real big money in marketing is not to spend money to write articles for KOLs, but to spend money to find middlemen to "settle" those "large quantities of sudden appearances" and "targeted" black articles at "critical moments". If the cost of a KOL article is 1, then the cost of settling black articles is 5 or even 10. Sometimes we even have to nip the problem in the bud and give the KOL away first, just to prevent this person from making too many remarks. If it is malicious competition from "friendly competitors", then there is no solution. In the past, at the critical moment of project listing, a large number of KOLs shouted in advance that the project was definitely listed on the big exchange, which led to the project being shelved due to the non-existent "information leakage" problem. The exchange requirements constrained the project's operating space. In addition to these costs, the current compliance requirements of the big exchange, especially Binance, are extremely strict. They are so strict that the address of each project party's coin issuance needs to be marked for use. If it is an investment/KOL round, it is also necessary to submit relevant contracts and transfer certificates. Even if it is an airdrop, those extremely poor "insider addresses" will be easily marked by their Research team. In other words, the current cost of insider trading is extremely high at least at the level of Binance spot. Even if you comply with these costs and requirements, you are lucky to get an offer from a big exchange. Until the last moment of the official announcement, you will never know whether your initial cost is wasted. For example: the exchange team you are connected to suddenly has problems, and all coin listings are suspended; the exchange is punished by a country with a large user source, and all coin listings are suspended; the financial regulatory department conducts surprise inspections and enters the office, and all coin listings are suspended. There are no less than 7 or 8 project parties around me who have everything ready and are in short supply at the last minute. Even if you are lucky enough to be listed in the exchange six months or a year later, the potential energy and chip structure of the project have changed, the expected income has been greatly reduced, and the cost spent has been wasted. According to the current market situation, the summary is: It is difficult to make money by listing on the spot market. If you want to make money, there are two alternative ways for the project party to make money by listing on the contract market: 1. Open FDV at a high level: Issuing coins is essentially the right to mint coins, that is, printing money. If you can't even print the cost of minting coins, what money can you print? Traditional finance dares to use 100x leverage, but you dare not do this in the cryptocurrency circle. What are you doing in the cryptocurrency circle? The speed of a coin opening at 4 billion and opening at 40 million and falling to 4 million is completely different. In addition to buying spot and opening long at high positions, exchanges, investors, and future CTOs, your wild market hot money will stand on your side. 2. Another path is to list on Alpha or CEX with extremely low liquidity and low cost, but find a way to list on Binance/Bybit/Hyperliquid contracts. If conditions permit, add a Korean exchange later. Since spot liquidity is extremely low, but the contract price is marked with the spot price, it is easy to make money as long as there is an "active market maker" involved. In this way, the compliance costs and constraints are greatly reduced, and the operating space left for the project party and the "banker" is greatly improved. Only in this way can it be possible to come up with a big contract and create volatility. The market actually rewards volatility greater than liquidity. But this is also your only chance to make money with this shell, because it has been proved that the market spot liquidity is the only way to keep this shell being hyped in both directions, keep the market relatively more attention, and open up multiple financing channels including liquid funds. The key is the entry of institutions on the spot exchanges of large exchanges. Give up the fantasy. Finally, this session of second-tier players, please give up the fantasy. Since CZ returned, there is no such thing as project party protection in this market. A meaningful market-making cycle requires extremely high market liquidity. The project party cannot complete it alone, and most of them do not have the money to complete it (all exchanges lose money). The same is true for repurchases. Most repurchases are Delta Neutral, IYKYK. The real path is that the project party creates events, whether black or red, to trigger bets among high-leverage traders mainly in the Asian market, and North American/Middle Eastern/Singapore liquid funds that have given up the primary and turned to the secondary to act as counterparties, resulting in a huge amount of gaming transactions in a short period of time, such as $Pengu $ENA. If you really believe that they protect the market by themselves, you will lose. They have always kept the market hot and blown what they want. They are already highly responsible for the market, and leave the rest to the liquid fund. Of course, the premise is that they must make money from the market before they are willing to continue to play with you, round after round. Remember, the current spot: futures trading volume of most exchange currencies is 1:10. Back then, everyone shouted loudly for institutions to enter the market. Now that they have achieved their wish, what can secondary players do? What secondary players can do is Play along, which can be translated into Chinese as "follow the market". When the trend just starts, buy those currencies that have been hyped in history, and then go to the public and private domains to shout orders. After a big green stick, sell it to the right person in time. You can enter the market because of the secondary; and you can make money because you are a primary player relative to the later capital.