Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly, challenged a common industry belief on social media: do projects really need to launch tokens during a bull market? His team analyzed all token listings announced on Binance's official blog from 2017 to 2025, excluding stablecoins and wrapped tokens, leaving 202 tokens for study. The result? A p-value of 0.81, effect size of 0.028, and 95% confidence interval from -10.9% to +14.2%. In plain terms, the timing of a token's launch—bull or bear—has no statistically meaningful impact on its long-term annualized return.
Breaking down the data
Tokens were grouped by whether they launched during a Bitcoin bull or bear market. The median annualized ROI for 101 bull-market tokens was 1.3% above the overall average, with a delisting rate of 15.2%. For 33 bear-market tokens, median ROI was 1.3% below average, with a delisting rate of 13.5%. The gap is negligible. Notably, the study accounted for delisted tokens as total losses, avoiding survivorship bias. The conclusion holds: bull vs. bear is not the deciding factor.
Three hidden advantages of launching in a bear market
Qureshi highlighted three perks for bear-market launches: less talent competition—bull markets spark salary wars, while bear markets make hiring top developers easier; lower service costs—exchange listing fees, marketing expenses, and market maker quotes all carry hefty premiums in a bull run; less CEX listing competition—fewer projects apply during downturns, so quality projects stand out. He admitted that if a project is simultaneously conducting a token sale (not just listing), a bull market does provide stronger buyer demand, but the overall effect is likely marginal.
Solana's Black Thursday origin story
Qureshi pointed to Solana as the ultimate example. On March 12, 2020—Bitcoin's Black Thursday—BTC fell from ~$8,000 to $3,800. Just four days later, Solana's mainnet beta launched. At the height of market panic, few believed a new layer-1 could survive. Today, Solana ranks among the top five cryptocurrencies by market cap. Qureshi says: "I often tell founders this story. The timing of the launch doesn't matter as much as the launch itself."