TL;DR

• Binance announced another delisting effort, this time involving PEPE and two other altcoins.
• The price of the frog-themed token has plummeted daily. Its pullback could be a result of Binance’s announcement and the recent bloodbath in the meme coin sector.

Removing These Pairs

The world’s biggest crypto exchange periodically reviews all pairs on its platform “to protect users and maintain a high-quality trading market.” As such, it delists some due to various factors, such as poor liquidity and trading volume.

Based on its latest evaluation, Binance will terminate the following spot trading pairs: PEPE/TUSD, DCR/BTC, and ZEN/ETH. The effort will come into effect on December 13.  

“The delisting of a spot trading pair does not affect the availability of the tokens on Binance Spot. Users can still trade the spot trading pair’s base and quote assets on other trading pair(s) that are available on Binance,” the company clarified.

A delisting spree launched by a major exchange like Binance usually has a negative effect on the underlying cryptocurrencies due to reduced liquidity, reputational damage, and other reasons. The frog-themed meme coin Pepe (PEPE), for example, is down 7% on a daily scale. DCR has dipped by 4%, while somewhat surprisingly, ZEN is up 2%.

It is worth mentioning that PEPE’s poor performance could also be linked to the massive red wave that has recently passed through the entire meme coin sector. 

In any case, PEPE’s price crash could have been much more substantial should Binance decided to remove it entirely from its platform. Recall that the altcoins Rupiah Token (IDRT), Keep3rV1 (KP3R), Ooki Protocol (OOKI), and Unifi Protocol DAO (UNFI) collapsed by double digits in November when the firm terminated all services with them.

A similar price drop was observed in February when Binance suspended trading services for Monero (XMR) and three other altcoins. The well-known privacy token experienced a decline of more than 20% soon after the news.

The Opposite Effect

On the other hand, when cryptocurrencies are added to Binance, their prices are often positively affected due to increased accessibility, a boost in market confidence, and other factors. 

In November, the firm introduced PONKE/USDT perpetual contracts, which allow up to 75x leverage. The price of the Solana-based meme coin PONKE soared by 15% minutes after the disclosure.

Simon’s Cat (CAT) experienced an even more significant rally in October when Binance launched 1000CATUSDT perpetual contracts on its futures program.