Gate News message, April 11—against the backdrop of easing tensions between the US and Iran and Bitcoin trading sideways at high levels, a series of low-market-cap altcoins have been repeatedly seeing sharp rallies and abrupt sell-offs. Typical examples include SIREN repeatedly pumping and dumping, and ARIA plunging within an hour after a month-long pump—drawing in many high-risk, high-reward investors.
These coins share common characteristics: spot holdings are highly concentrated, they have contract trading pairs on a certain CEX, and the team behind them tightly controls the market and drives heavy order-flow control. That particular CEX issued a market-maker risk guide on March 25, warning users to watch out for one-sided sell-offs and abnormal trading behavior, but such conditions have not eased since entering April—and have even intensified.
Some members of the crypto community believe this is not necessarily a bad thing, saying, “The most attractive part of crypto is its high volatility—volatility is what draws in liquidity.” During periods of high volatility for these coins, their daily futures trading volume often reaches hundreds of millions, or even tens of billions of dollars.
There are also risk-averse investors who express concern, arguing that these altcoins have no fundamental support and are purely a capital game. In the end, those who repeatedly go in with large positions can only see their assets go to zero.
These short-term breakout coins fall into high-Beta rotation plays. In essence, they are a game against high-control, heavily-positioned operators. Retail investors are at an absolute disadvantage, so when trading, it’s important to manage position size, apply strict stop-losses, and they are not suitable for conservative holdings.