Exchanges’ Mass- Delisting of Tokens: A Precursor To The Next Bull Market?

[PRIBO247]

With the price of Bitcoin hitting yearly lows, and many
Altcoins now dipping far below their ICO price, it’s
becoming clear that many cryptocurrencies will not
survive this bear market.
Because the ecosystem is so new, most of us are
uncertain about what signs to look for to determine
whether a crypto project is on its last legs. Price is an
obvious indicator, but that can sometimes be deceiving.
After all, if all the projects that lost 70-90% of their
value in the past year were on their way out, then that
would only leave about 3-5 projects in the entire space.

A much clearer sign of a project’s demise is its
delisting from major exchanges. Just today, OKEX
announced that they would be delisting a third batch of
trading pairs.
The exchange stated that;

“To create a robust trading environment and
offer the best trading experience to our users, we
will delist several TRADING PAIRS with weak
liquidity and trading volume according to the
OKEx Token Delisting / Hiding Guideline.”

The affected tokens include Request Network (REQ),
Raiden Network (RDN), Metal, (MTL), Iconomi (ICN) and
around 30 more. Most of the tokens are paired with
either ETH or BTC, while some are paired with USDT.

The rising number of tokens being delisted should not
surprise anyone. However, some of the names included
in the list are still quite shocking, especially
considering how highly tokens like REQ or RDN were
held in regard just 6-8 months ago.
What this reveals is that many promising projects are
failing to not only meet the standards of investors but
even the standards of the exchanges. Exchanges are
businesses that literally profit from featuring as many
tokens as possible (more token trading pairs equals
more revenue earned from trading fees). Yet, the listed
30 or so tokens have performed so poorly, in matters of
trading volume, that their presence on an exchange like
OKEX is a net negative.

According to OKEXs delisting guidelines , decisions to
delist a token are based on the following criteria:

* Project and Team – making major changes in the
team, product or business model without notifying
OKEx in advance for auditing; or transferring or
selling the project

* Token Trading – Increasing the total available
supply of the token or splitting the token without
notifying users and the exchange 15 days in
advance

* Operations – Major deviations in information
disclosure, deceiving users and the exchange
Project Technology – The project development is not
carried out in accordance with the timeline of the
roadmap planned in the White Paper. Progress
delays without explanation or announcement

* Security & Safety – Serious technical or safety
issues found during Mainnet swap and refusing to
pay a security deposit

These criteria lead us to believe that the current batch
of tokens being delisted had not only failed to meet
expectations in terms of development, but may have
also made big decisions without informing their
community or the exchange, which would be a big
breach of trust in the crypto space. Furthermore,
regulatory issues may have created added pressure for
exchanges to delist certain tokens that were clearly
offering unregistered securities. Exchanges who have
an interest in penetrating the US market would have to
be especially cautious about the type of tokens they
allow to be traded to avoid clashing with the SEC.

OKEX IS NOT ALONE

In recent months, other exchanges, like Bittrex and
Kucoin have also delisted tokens. In October, Bittrex
delisted Bitshares, Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin private.
Kucoin announced that they were delisting 6 coins just
2 days ago (Raiden Network being amongst them).
Lastly, Poloniex announced back in July that they
would delist 9 coins.
The reasons for delisting ranged from security issues
(Bitcoin Gold experienced one of the largest 51%
attacks in cryptocurrency history), difficulties runnings
nodes (BTS), or simply limited trading volume.
Predictably, all coins experienced a 20-80% decline
when their delisting was announced.

THE POSITIVE ASPECT: IS THUS CLEANSING A PRECURSOR TO THE BULL MARKET?

The bright side of OKEX removing these trading pairs
from their exchange is that it increases the quality of
tokens available for trading. OKEX is one of the largest
exchanges in the world, and by setting strict quality
standards, it displays a level of integrity on behalf of
the exchange, and it also reduces the risk of retail
investors being exposed to fraudulent projects. This is a
great example of the crypto space maturing and taking
responsibility for filtering out its weakest links and bad
actors so that the SEC doesn’t have to.
Ultimately, if more exchanges focus less on short-term
revenue, and more on raising the quality standards of
the tokens listed, we will establish a natural filtering
process that allows only the strongest and most
transparent projects to flourish during the next crypto
bull run.

Source : https://cryptopotato.com/exchanges-mass-delisting-of-tokens-a-precursor-to-the-next-bull-market/