Binance just dropped 19 trading pairs from the spot market, and even Bitcoin and Ethereum were not immune to the cut.
Starting Jan. 23 at 3:00 a.m. UTC, Binance is going to stop supporting a bunch of trading pairs, like AI/BTC, FIL/ETH, DYDX/FDUSD, LRC/ETH, XVG/ETH, YFI/BTC and more. Most users can still find these tokens paired with USDT, BNB or FDUSD, but Binance is moving forward with its plan to consolidate fragmented markets.
The biggest impact? For anyone who uses BTC or ETH pairs for liquidity routing, pair arbitrage or strategic hedging, there will be fewer direct options. Automated strategies are also affected; Spot Trading Bots linked to these pairs will auto-terminate unless canceled manually in advance.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, AI and meme coins affected
Some of the big names that are now off the list include major DeFi players like Lido (LDO), dYdX (DYDX) and Yearn Finance (YFI); meme coins like Book of Meme (BOME) and Peanut (PNUT); and infrastructure tokens like Filecoin (FIL), Zilliqa (ZIL) and Verge (XVG).
Even some unconventional picks like Ethena (ENA) and Numeraire (NMR) made the list.
None of the tokens are being delisted entirely — just stripped of specific quote assets. Binance calls this "market quality" optimization, but it is also a sign of changing user behavior, fewer BTC-pair volumes and more USD-stable pairs like USDT and FDUSD.
It is pretty obvious that Binance is looking for depth rather than breadth. And BTC/ETH pairs might not be the liquidity gold standard they once were. So, while the assets are still tradable, their direct Bitcoin and Ethereum pairings are disappearing.
Godfrey Benjamin
Denys Serhiichuk
Gamza Khanzadaev
Arman Shirinyan
Alex Dovbnya