Recently, during the PEPE delisting controversy, what was the craziest question people asked in the backend consultations? Someone actually wanted to borrow money and leverage to make a comeback. Honestly, this isn’t an investment strategy; it’s playing with fire. Instead of obsessing over the rise and fall of individual coins, it’s better to understand a more fundamental question—why can some small coins survive while others are being delisted in bulk from exchanges? The answer lies in these three iron laws, mastering which can save you a lot of losses.

**First Law: Liquidity is the Line Between Life and Death**

The core reason exchanges decide to delist a coin almost always points to the same issue—liquidity exhaustion. What is insufficient liquidity? In other words, being unable to sell. If you hold 1 million coins and want to sell, but the order book only has 100,000 buy orders, the remaining 900,000 can only be sold by continuously dropping the price, leading to a downward spiral where no one wants to buy, and eventually, the coin becomes worthless. The fundamental reason PEPE was delisted is that its daily trading volume has been steadily declining, falling below the exchange’s liquidity threshold.

How to judge if a coin’s liquidity is healthy enough? Look at the average daily trading volume over the past 7 days, and check the order book depth—from the top buy to the fifth buy, the total amount of orders. If it can’t even match one-tenth of your holdings, that’s a red flag—time to withdraw.

**Second Law: Beware of Relying on a Single Exchange**

Many small coins’ listing strategies are “keep it minimal,” only listing on one or two exchanges. Once that exchange decides to delist, liquidity is cut in half, with nowhere else to absorb the trading volume. PEPE is a typical lesson—once the top platform delists it, the depth on other small exchanges can’t hold up, and the price can fluctuate wildly in an instant.

What about small coins that have survived longer? They usually list on at least three or more mainstream exchanges simultaneously, diversifying risk and ensuring that, even in the worst case, there’s still a last line of defense for liquidity.