Both sides are listed, only one side is held: the directional 3X and volatility tokens

TL;DR

The long and the short 3X of the same index are both listed here, but the money is almost entirely on the long side — and the last 30 days belonged to the short side.

• The two long tokens hold $40.72M together, the two short tokens $6.12M — long is 6.65 times short. Pair by pair: SOXLB over SOXSB is 5.44 times, TQQQB over SQQQB is 15.01 times.
• And the short side was the right side over these 30 days: SOXSB +70.82%, SQQQB +24.94%, against SOXLB −51.90% and TQQQB −22.36%. In a month when the short side returned 70%, the long tokens are still the ones being held.
• Same plus or minus 3x structure, different index, 2.59 times the magnitude. The 30-day average magnitude of the semiconductor pair is 61.36%, of the Nasdaq pair 23.65%. That advances the finding in the previous piece that the multiplier does not set the range: when the multiplier is fixed, the index accounts for the entire difference.
• "Hold both sides and decay eats both" does not hold in this window. Holding the semiconductor pair in equal dollars for 30 days nets +18.92 percentage points and the Nasdaq pair +2.58 — in a one-way trend, compounding sits with whichever side is winning and the net is positive. A choppier month can give the opposite result from the same two pairs.
• Counter-example: a plain common stock listed the same day is wider than the −3x SOXSB, and turns over faster. FLNCB range width 3.044x against SOXSB 2.695x, turnover 2.197x against 1.361x, over the same 95-day window. An inverse 3X is not guaranteed to be the most violent instrument on the book.
• Only two of the five have been listed 100 days; SQQQB has 60 days and UVXYB 19, so their range widths (1.368x / 1.341x) carry no information.

1. What these five are

bStocks is Binance's in-house tokenized-equity issuer (BTech Holdings Limited, ADGM / FSRA listed certificates, BNB Chain only, traded on Binance only). CoinMarketCap reports 105 instruments; the snapshot behind this piece holds 100 of them, timestamped 2026-10-31T06:06:52Z.

Twelve of those 100 carry leverage or inversion. The previous piece handled five single-stock 2x products; this one takes the most neatly paired set among the remaining directional tools: two index bull-and-bear 3X pairs, plus one volatility 2x.

The group holds $47.31M, 3.59% of the book, and did $56.19M, 6.43% of its volume. Group turnover of 1.1876x is 1.85 times the 0.6430x of the other 95 instruments — which is what you would expect, since directional tools exist to be traded.

Two definitions first. One, only SOXLB (117 days) and TQQQB (103 days) have cleared 100 days, so any comparison below involving "the 46 instruments listed 100 days or more" includes only those two. Two, UVXYB does not track a stock index but VIX short-term futures, so its 2x is 2x on a futures curve, not on an equity index — it is not in the same product family as the other four, and this piece leaves it out of every pairing section.

2. Both sides are listed, only one side is held

Grouping the four index 3X products by direction:

The two long tokens hold 6.65 times the market cap of the two short tokens and do 5.02 times the volume. Short turnover (1.4790x) is actually higher than long (1.1149x) — purely the smaller denominator, not more activity; in absolute volume the short side is a fifth of the long side.

Pair by pair, the tilt holds on both indices, in the same direction and at different magnitudes:

The Nasdaq pair is the more extreme: long is 15 times short. SQQQB market cap of $773.5K ranks 78th on the book, while TQQQB ranks 20th.

What makes the tilt worth noting is that it holds in the month the short side won:

All three tokens that are short or long volatility rose; both tokens that are long an index fell. Only 18 of the 100 instruments on the book are positive over 30 days, and three of them are in this group (SOXSB, SQQQB, UVXYB) — a group holding 3.59% of book value supplies a sixth of the book risers.

SQQQB sits in the most extreme position: just −4.1% from its listed high, at 84.6% of its own range. Only 16 instruments on the book are within 10% of their high, and SQQQB is one of them, the only one in this group. It is the directional tool closest to its own high in this channel, and also the second smallest instrument in this group.

3. Same multiplier, two indices, 2.59 times the magnitude

The previous piece used TQQQB as a counter-example: among the ten instruments listed the same day, the 3x TQQQB has a range width of 1.512x, narrower than two plain common stocks (AXTIB 2.658x, CRWVB 2.274x), with the conclusion that the underlying own volatility explains the range better than the leverage factor. This section does not repeat that observation but pushes it one step: here are two structurally identical plus-or-minus-3X pairs, so the multiplier variable is held fixed and every remaining difference can only come from the index.

Same plus-or-minus 3x daily-reset structure, same 30-day calendar window, and the semiconductor pair averages 2.59 times the magnitude of the Nasdaq pair. Same multiplier, same window, same issuer, same chain, same venue — the index is the only variable.

Range width gives an independent confirmation. Among the 46 instruments listed 100 days or more, SOXLB width 2.892x ranks 43rd (4th widest), while TQQQB 1.512x ranks 14th. The five widest on the book are INTWB 5.583x, SNXXB 3.243x, MVLLB 3.075x, SOXLB 2.892x and KORUB 2.669x — the first three are the single-stock 2x set from the previous piece, and the fourth is this group SOXLB. Leveraged instruments do cluster at the wide end (median width for leveraged ETFs is 2.892x, n=7, against 1.768x for common stocks, n=28), but SOXLB and TQQQB differ 1.91 times within this group, and that gap is larger than the gap between the two type medians.

So the reading this group supplies is: ask which index the underlying is first, and what the multiplier is second. Reverse the order and TQQQB and SOXLB look like the same class of risk.

4. "Hold both sides and decay eats both" does not hold in this window

The most repeated claim about daily-reset leveraged products is that holding both sides means decay eats both. This snapshot tests it directly, because the same issuer on the same chain lists both sides of two indices and the 30-day window is one calendar window.

Both pairs net positive. Buying SOXLB and SOXSB in equal dollars 30 days ago and holding would, on these two figures, have left the combination up.

This should not be read as a strategy, nor as "decay does not exist". A daily-reset product resets exposure back to plus-or-minus 3x every day, so a multi-day outcome depends on the path: in a one-way trend, compounding favours the winning side and the winner gains more than the loser loses; in a choppy range both sides get cut. Both indices trended one way over these 30 days — visible in the sign consistency, with both shorts up and both longs down and no side reversed — so the outcome landed on the trend side.

A choppier month can give the exact opposite net from the same two pairs. What this table falsifies is only the absolute claim that holding both sides must lose in any window; it does not prove the converse.

One more detail that captures path dependence: the SOXSB 7-day move is −0.79% while its 30-day move is +70.82%. The same token, up seventy percent in a month and slightly down in the past week — almost all of the return in products like this comes from a handful of trend days rather than spreading evenly across the window. The SQQQB equivalents are +4.09% over 7 days against +24.94% over 30, equally concentrated.

5. The counter-example: a plain common stock listed the same day is wider than the −3x SOXSB

This group thesis is that these are directional tools with a decay cost rather than holdings, and the easiest over-extension of it is "so they are the most violent things in this snapshot". The instruments that listed on the same day refute that extension directly.

SOXSB listed on 2026-07-28, one of ten instruments that day, by range width:

FLNCB is a common stock with no leverage at all, over the same 95-day window as SOXSB, and its range width of 3.044x is 13% wider than SOXSB 2.695x while its turnover of 2.197x is 61% higher than SOXSB 1.361x. An inverse 3X beaten on both volatility and turnover by an energy-storage stock listed the same day. On turnover, DELLB (2.707x) and PYPLB (2.239x) also beat SOXSB — but all three of those hold under $1M, so the denominator effect accounts for a good part of it, which means the clean counter-example is the range width: 3.044x against 2.695x, with nothing to do with market cap.

This is not a one-off. The previous piece already recorded the same direction from another angle: in the 2026-07-20 cohort, the 3x TQQQB width 1.512x is narrower than two plain common stocks (AXTIB 2.658x, CRWVB 2.274x). This section is that conclusion reappearing in a different cohort and a different direction (inverse rather than long) — two independent observations, one conclusion: the leverage factor is not a sufficient condition for volatility.

A third counter-example sits in the holdings: if this channel preferred leverage, then within a theme the sizes of the plain index token and the 3X token should consistently favour the latter. They do not.

On the Nasdaq the plain index token is 8.46 times the 3X; on semiconductors the 3X is 15.37 times the plain index token — the two point opposite ways. So "this channel prefers leverage" is a generalisation that does not hold; the accurate statement is that the leverage preference on the semiconductor line is extreme while the Nasdaq line runs the other way. The Korea pair is nearly level ($10.72M against $10.48M), the only one of the three where both ways of buying are comparable in size.

6. Putting this group back in the book

First, this group is one of the main sources of risers on the book. The book 30-day median is −16.71%, with 82 of 100 negative and 18 positive. Three of this group five are positive, a sixth of those 18, while the group holds only 3.59% of book value.

Second, three members have windows too short for range width. SQQQB has been listed 60 days, UVXYB only 19, SOXSB 95. Their widths are 1.368x / 1.341x / 2.695x — the first two are narrow because the window is short, not because they are calm. The narrowest on the book, BRKBB (1.031x), has likewise been listed only 12 days; this pattern repeats throughout the snapshot. Only SOXLB and TQQQB enter the comparison across the 46 instruments listed 100 days or more.

Third, later listing means smaller size, and this group is a textbook case. The book by listing month:

The five members sit in four different listing months: SOXLB and TQQQB in July ($29.12M and $11.61M), SOXSB at the end of July ($5.35M), SQQQB in September ($773.5K), UVXYB in October ($463.1K). The market-cap ordering matches the listing-date ordering exactly — within this group, "when it listed" explains size better than "long or short" does. Which means part of that 6.65 times tilt in section 2 is that the short side listed later.

This has to be said plainly to be honest: SOXSB listed 22 days after SOXLB, and SQQQB 43 days after TQQQB. The direction tilt and the listing-date gap are entangled, and this data cannot separate them — see section 9.

Fourth, this group stands out on the turnover table. By book turnover rank: UVXYB 5th (3.732x), SQQQB 17th (2.297x), SOXSB 33rd (1.361x), SOXLB 39th (1.168x), TQQQB 43rd (0.981x). All five are in the front half, the only group in this series so far where that happens. But note the market caps of the top two, $463.1K and $773.5K; the denominator effect applies here as well (quantified in the previous piece), so the figure actually worth looking at is the SOXLB 1.168x alongside $34.02M of absolute volume — 8th on the book by volume, the only member of this group in the volume top ten.

7. Structure: a directional tool stacked on a tracker certificate

All of this comes from the issuer record on this site, the same data behind /stocks/bstocks:

• Legal wrapper: tracker certificate, ADGM / FSRA listed, issued by BTech Holdings Limited. The holder gets a certificate that tracks a price, not a fund unit.
• Voting: none.
• Dividends: pass-through, but a 30% US withholding deduction comes first, and the remainder is reinvested through a multiplier.
• Redemption: available, KYC required, $5 minimum.
• Proof of reserve: attestation, not a live on-chain proof.
• US persons: blocked.
• Chain: BNB Chain only. BSC deposits only, so a wrong-network transfer loses the asset.
• Issuance model: exchange self-issued; the only venue is Binance, operated by the issuer.
• Grade on this site: B.

Three of those matter extra for this group.

All five are tokens over certificates, and the underlying is itself a fund. The chain is: the index, a leveraged ETF (a fund that resets exposure daily and charges a management fee), an ADGM tracker certificate, a BNB Chain token. Three layers, and the daily reset in the middle layer is the source of every return characteristic these products have. The token layer resets nothing; it only tracks the fund price.

UVXYB carries one layer more. Its underlying ETF holds VIX short-term futures contracts and has to roll them to maintain exposure. So its chain is: the VIX index, futures contracts, a 2x leveraged fund (reset plus roll), a certificate, a token. Four layers, with roll cost and daily reset as two independent sources of decay — this data records neither, see section 9.

The $5 redemption minimum means something particular here. These five trade at $77.31 / $63.12 / $51.41 / $40.93 / $18.98, so a $5 floor is no obstacle. But redemption is the path back from token to certificate, and behind the certificate sits a fund that resets daily — the end of the redemption path is not "some number of shares", which separates these from a common-stock token.

8. This snapshot was taken on a Saturday

The timestamp 2026-10-31T06:06:52Z is a Saturday morning UTC. US cash equities closed on Friday at 20:00 UTC and do not reopen until Monday — for more than two days after this snapshot, these token prices are the only prices these names have.

For this group that definition matters more than for any other: the "day" in daily reset is the trading day of the underlying fund. While the underlying ETF is closed no reset happens at all, and the token quote keeps moving. So over a weekend the relationship between the token price and the plus-or-minus-3x-daily-return product definition is looser than it is intraday — hold one of these across a weekend and at the product level it has not been through a single reset, while its on-chain price has already moved.

This has already been quantified once on the same issuer: one stock, four books lays the four tokenized versions of AAPL side by side on a Saturday and concludes that a quote outside trading hours is a market maker opinion, not a market price.

The 24-hour moves here (SOXLB −9.88%, SOXSB +6.83%) run from Friday 06:06 UTC to Saturday 06:06 UTC and contain one complete US session, so they are not pure closed-market quotes. Note that the pair has opposite signs and unequal magnitudes (−9.88% against +6.83%), which is consistent with what plus-or-minus 3x on one index does in a single day, but the single-day asymmetry cannot be attributed from this data.

9. What this method cannot compute

First, no premium or discount. The snapshot holds only the token price, with no reference price for the underlying ETF. More to the point, the bStocks dividend mechanism is "deduct 30% US withholding, then reinvest through a multiplier" — without knowing the current multiplier, the token unit price and the fund unit NAV are not comparable in the first place. So no premium figure appears here.

Second, no decay attribution. The table in section 4 can only compare the period returns of two tokens; it cannot split the difference into daily-reset decay, management fee, roll cost and tracking error. That needs a daily NAV series, which the snapshot does not hold. The UVXYB roll cost in particular is entirely invisible.

Third, no way to say how much of the direction tilt is the listing date. The 6.65 times in section 2 and the listing-date gaps in section 6 (the short side later by 22 and 43 days) are two entangled factors. This snapshot is a single moment with no historical market-cap series, so it cannot answer what the tilt would be if SOXSB and SOXLB had listed on the same day. This piece gives the magnitude of the tilt, not a decomposition of its cause.

Fourth, the range-width windows are unequal, and badly so for this group. The five are 117/103/95/60/19 days. The book comparison uses only the 46 instruments listed 100 days or more, and only two members qualify. The SQQQB 1.368x and the UVXYB 1.341x carry no information — the narrowest on the book, BRKBB (1.031x), has likewise been listed only 12 days.

Fifth, market cap is CMC's definition (price times circulating supply), and the book total of $1,318.38M is the sum of these 100 rows; the bStocks row on this site's /stocks page shows an on-chain size of $914M — two figures from a different source and a different moment, which will not tie out. This piece uses the former throughout.

Sixth, 100 of 105. CMC reports 105 instruments; the snapshot holds 100. The missing five appear in no figure here.

Seventh, turnover is 24h volume divided by market cap. A small denominator inflates the ratio, so the UVXYB 3.732x (5th on the book) is first of all a consequence of a $463.1K market cap and must not be read as the best liquidity in this group. Its absolute volume of $1.73M is 5.1% of SOXLB.

Conclusion. bStocks lists the bull and bear 3X of the same index together, which makes something normally hard to observe directly countable: after a month in which the short side returned +70.82% and +24.94% and the long side lost −51.90% and −22.36%, the long tokens still hold 6.65 times the market cap of the short ones. Pair by pair that is 5.44 times and 15.01 times. Part of it comes from the short side listing later (by 22 and 43 days), and this data cannot separate the two factors.

With the multiplier held fixed, this group gives a clean comparison: same plus-or-minus 3x daily-reset structure, same 30-day window, and the semiconductor pair averages 61.36% against 23.65% for the Nasdaq pair, a factor of 2.59. That turns the previous piece finding that the multiplier does not set the range into something stronger: with the multiplier identical, the index accounts for the entire difference. SOXLB and TQQQB differ 1.91 times on width within this group, more than the gap between the leveraged-ETF and common-stock type medians.

Two counter-examples stand. FLNCB, a common stock listed the same day over the same 95-day window, beats the −3x SOXSB on both range width 3.044x and turnover 2.197x — inverse triple leverage is no guarantee of being the most violent instrument. And "this channel prefers leverage" does not hold either: on semiconductors the 3X token is 15.37 times the plain index token, while on the Nasdaq the plain index token is 8.46 times the 3X. The two lines point opposite ways.

Source CoinMarketCap, timestamped 2026-10-31T06:06:52Z, covering 100 of the 105 instruments bStocks reports. Instrument detail and quotes at /stocks/bstocks. Research notes, not investment advice. DYOR.