Sir, the times have changed yet again.
After the tariff turmoil, the market has cyclically shifted from bear to bull. Besides price fluctuations and sporadic hot projects, there is now a mainline task running through the daily lives of crypto users — How many points do you have on Binance Alpha today?
According to X user @btguagua, as of April 25 when the point system was launched, Binance has conducted 15 money-spending activities for users in the form of 'airdrop + TGE activities' by May 15. Yesterday, the airdrop of $NXPC could yield about 700 USD per account at its peak price.
If you have been continuously tracking and participating in Alpha while maintaining a qualifying score, based on the peak listing price of Alpha tokens, a single account's earnings could approach 2000 USD within twenty days. Even after accounting for transaction slippage costs, that's still a considerable profit.
In less than a month, the short-term returns from participating in Binance Alpha have already outperformed the increasingly disfavored profit-seeking sector.
From a nuisance to a hot commodity.
When 'Binance Alpha 1.0' was first launched, aside from the initial few days' excitement brought by the 'Binance Spot Candidate' concept, which caused a pump for tokens listed on the Alpha list, the overall positioning of the Alpha sector seemed rather redundant. It either listed some popular meme tokens at that time or tokens from their own wallet's TGE activities. Many meme players and project parties treated Binance Alpha as the last stop for liquidity in a short period. Later on, 'listing on Binance Alpha' could hardly be considered a clear positive signal, and the trading volume of the Alpha sector quickly waned, seemingly moving further away from Binance's original 'growth' goals.
Although 'Binance Alpha 2.0' has moved the Alpha interface to the exchange, the data shows that this move has had minimal effect. What truly brings a qualitative change to the data layer is still the 'point admission system' that has been on everyone's mind.
According to a data panel created by Dune user @pandajackson, since the launch of the point system, the trading volume of Binance Alpha 2.0 has increased exponentially. As of May 15, the daily trading volume of Binance Alpha has reached 771 million USD.
According to a data panel created by Dune user @lz_web3, the short-term trading volume of Binance Wallet also tops the entire wallet sector.
Looking solely at trading data, Binance's growth strategy has successfully made itself a hot commodity for market attention and capital.
Market participation, who wins and who loses?
From market discussions and user feedback, Binance's recent money-spending activity has satisfied most people; all parties in the market have enjoyed this round of dividends. Users who meet the point requirements are the most direct beneficiaries. Whether retail investors or clustered studios, from certain perspectives, they have all capitalized on this wave of Binance's artificial trend to earn the first wave of dividends from a 'new asset issuance method.'
For individuals who maintain participation, daily discussions, checking, and earning Alpha points have become a regular task. Watching the steadily increasing Alpha points feels like securely holding an asset that guarantees returns.
The returns from Binance Alpha can be considered 'stable happiness' for individuals in the short term. However, for the group of studios with the ability to launch multiple accounts, this seems to be a real opportunity.
'Now, many projects have reduced their manpower and financial investment, all focusing on Binance Alpha,' said Lu Ge (a pseudonym), who runs a profit-seeking studio, to Deep Tide TechFlow. Close to 2000 USD in net profit from a single account within twenty days, with a return cycle and yield far exceeding over 90% of crypto projects. In contrast to most crypto projects that operate on a model of 'six months to start, with no upper limit,' where returns are unknown, the 'instant feedback, one order to break even' profit model of Binance Alpha is precisely the participation method that profit-seeking studios dream of. Even various yet-to-launch 'top-tier' projects seem dim under the current high-density money-spending comparisons.
From the feedback of many profit-seeking bloggers, the consensus has shifted to 'it's better to profit from Alpha than from projects'...
For project parties, launching on Binance Alpha has now become an excellent opportunity for traffic exposure. It can also serve as a 'score boosting target' to gain long-term liquidity, with trading volumes of popular assets like $ZKJ and $B² continuing to grow.
According to X user @_FORAB, the current schedule for Binance Alpha's initial token listings has already reached mid-June. Although there are numerous rules and requirements, project parties are still eager to seize this massive traffic.
For competing exchanges, Binance's series of money-spending strategies and their growth data are indeed tantalizing. When the Binance Alpha event was booming, various exchanges also launched their own money-spending growth activities.
Of course, even as many celebrate profits, there are still those who are bearing the weight of 'losing money.'
The first to lose money are those who endure trading slippage to earn points but still fail to receive airdrop returns due to insufficient scores.
According to X user Gu He.hl (@ZKSgu), under the catalyzing effect of the Alpha point mechanism, many users choose to boost scores without considering slippage. During this process, if the trading assets and slippage settings are not chosen well, they could suffer significant slippage. At the same time, the difficulty of obtaining trading points has multiplied; the difference between hundreds of thousands in trading volume and thousands in trading volume might only be a few points, but the slippage could amount to hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Moreover, aside from users who are directly losing money through score boosting, many users who genuinely engage with projects for airdrops are also suffering from some 'invisible losses' under the coverage of the Binance Alpha activities: to ensure profits for users participating in Alpha activities, projects that launch on Binance Alpha must offer a substantial share of their tokens + lock liquidity. To cover the 'cost of going Alpha', some project parties choose to deduct portions of tokens originally reserved for the community and transfer them to Binance Alpha for the purpose of issuing airdrops. In this transfer, some funds that belonged to 'project community users' have shifted into the pockets of 'Binance Alpha users.' This action directly hinders the user growth of Web3 projects, instead centralizing native users within the exchange.
When will the competition end?
I remember before, everyone criticized the point system for project airdrops, which kept users' time, energy, money, and expectations in suspense while driving participants into a frenzy. Perhaps due to the quick and genuine positive feedback, the market has become less vocal in criticizing Binance Alpha's extensive point system, with more praises for its returns.
On the positive side, Binance Alpha somewhat guides market enthusiasm in an environment lacking a main narrative, with money-spending activities benefiting ordinary users. At the same time, the activities of listing tokens on the platform have gradually demystified the idea of 'listing on Binance' to some extent.
From a negative perspective, the current main way to earn Alpha points remains mechanically boosting scores. Essentially, score boosting offers little value beyond generating data for wallets and project parties. Many people spend money and endure high on-chain slippage but fail to receive returns in a crazy competitive environment.
Given the current development momentum, the point threshold required to obtain Alpha rewards will continue to rise in the future. Furthermore, as the Alpha activities progress, they will tend to become more actuarial and intensive, and falling just one point short could mean missing out on eligibility to participate, making it significantly harder for small investors and ordinary users to participate.
Summary
The overwhelming momentum of Binance Alpha reminds one of the Qin state in the 'Records of the Grand Historian' — 'sweeping the six harmonies, capturing the vassals, splitting the world, and swallowing the eight wastelands,' fierce and rapidly expanding in scale and influence.
Yet this expansion seems to have happened too quickly; as the saying goes: 'The momentum of a prairie fire may not burn long.' Any model that burns market expectations too quickly must face the test of sustainability. The current high short-term returns feel more like Binance is paying for user education; as long as it can attract users' time, money, energy, and attention, future planning can be considered from a long-term perspective.
The difficulty for users to earn returns has indeed increased; the current point deduction system is testing participants' investment research abilities. The time when users could lay back and earn airdrops by merely boosting scores is over. Moving forward, those who want to achieve appropriate returns from activities may be players skilled at assessing projects.
From the user's participation perspective, opportunities with high certainty and positive expected value, like Binance Alpha, are not common even throughout a complete bull-bear cycle. Controlling the window of opportunity is crucial. As for how long this period of benefits can last and whether Binance Alpha will have a negative impact on the market in the future? 'When the benefits are exhausted, look for the next opportunity. No one can predict what comes next, but you must seize every opportunity.' This is what Lu Ge from the Luma Studio said in an interview.
