The "Meituan Battle" in the cryptocurrency world: The traffic game behind Alpha points
In the seemingly lively "exchange subsidy war," the points are increasingly rolled up, the thresholds are getting higher, and ordinary users appear more like background props.Author: Scof, ChainCatcher
Editor: TB, ChainCatcher
Recently, the takeaway market has suddenly become lively.
JD.com is making moves, Alibaba is entering the fray, and Meituan is responding, marking the beginning of a three-way battle. We can see promotions like "free milk tea," "hundred billion subsidies," and "30-minute delivery" rising one after another, but the underlying logic is not complicated: binding users through high-frequency consumption scenarios (takeaway) to build a foundation for their instant retail business.
This is very similar to the fierce competition among exchanges in the crypto space. Binance's Alpha points system is the most typical example, with point-based new listings, airdrop rankings, and trading rankings—put another way, it's a "subsidy war" in the digital asset field. It's not about competing for new users, but rather vying for users' attention, trading behavior, and loyalty.
Other exchanges are not idle either. Bybit quickly launched a staking version of the Alpha points airdrop, mirroring Binance's approach, trying to capture the same group of highly active users; OKX announced a million-dollar airdrop plan.
This is a typical game of existing stock.
Alpha Points Reach New Heights, Ordinary Users Marginalized
The popularity of the Alpha sector continues to rise. On May 5, the trading volume of Binance Alpha exceeded $274 million, with daily transactions surpassing 1 million for the first time. The key to this surge in data is the continuously rising threshold for "Alpha points."
Data Source: Dune, @Pandajackson
In the initial phase, 50 points might have been enough to qualify for an airdrop. But the latest round has seen the score line soar to 142 points, requiring nearly 10 points daily over the past 15 days, corresponding to a trading volume of $1,024. Many ordinary players feel caught off guard.
Crypto KOL Xia Xueyi stated that he lost over $10,000 in a month and still feels "unqualified." Under this mechanism, only continuously active, high-frequency traders and studios can maintain competitive points.
Meanwhile, although Binance has introduced consolation prizes like "UID last digit X lucky airdrop," the actual appeal to true retail users is limited. A large amount of subsidies ultimately flows to institutional users and score-farming teams.
This is very similar to the "wool party" in the takeaway war: they rush to new platforms for short-term subsidies, but once the price advantage disappears, most will return to the platforms they are familiar with and trust.
Binance's Open Strategy: Designing Rules, Creating Traffic
Looking at the strategy behind the Alpha points system: the Stakestone project allocated 5% of tokens for IDO, 1.5% for main site airdrops, and 3.93% for returning to old users, totaling 10.43% of the tokens. These tokens brought over $5 million in potential selling pressure when priced at $0.06, and at its peak, it was even close to $9 million.
However, the project team did not choose to sell immediately but instead guided trading volume and maintained price stability to ultimately meet the "listing requirements" on Binance's main site. This is not a simple market behavior but a "game of cooperation with algorithms."
In other words, exchanges do not wait for projects to grow naturally but design a set of "if you want to go live, you have to dance to my rhythm" entry system. Alpha points filter users, trading volume filters project parties, and price performance filters market cap management capabilities.
Ultimately completing the closed loop: traffic comes in, data looks good, trading volume surges, and the platform wins.
Who is the Winner? Who Can Hold On?
The war between exchanges is actually similar to that of takeaway platforms: burning money to attract users, subsidizing to seize the market, and creating traffic peaks. But for users, what remains after the excitement? Many people are struggling to earn points in the Alpha points system, losing money to qualify, only to find that they missed out on airdrops and did not participate in new listings, merely adding bricks to the platform's data.
Platforms can repeatedly change their strategies, but users' choices are always realistic. Many will switch platforms for short-term subsidies, but once the price advantage disappears and the rules become complicated, most will return to their familiar place. Subsidies can only bring traffic, not trust.
This also raises a practical question: Alpha is defined as a place to "incubate quality projects," but projects listed do not always perform ideally. Some projects start high and drop low, making it difficult to enter the spot market on Binance, viewed by users as a "temporary project area." Over time, will this frequent low-quality listing damage Alpha's reputation and even affect users' confidence in the entire Binance listing system?
From a broader perspective, does the crypto world still have an "incremental market"? If everything has turned into a battle for existing stock, what will ultimately measure the value of users?
In this era of existing stock games, exchanges need users' loyalty and behavior; users need the platform's trust and long-term returns. If this relationship begins to tilt, that would be a greater cost than missing an airdrop.
The takeaway war can at least bring a cup of "free milk tea," so many users hope the subsidy battle can last a little longer to save some money. Similarly, seeing Binance, OKX, and Bybit take turns competing for users, users also expect other exchanges to ramp up their efforts—don't just make users "work hard for points," but genuinely benefit them, turning competition into a positive game for users.
