Bybit New-Listing Supply-Overhang Decay: short each newly launched high-turnover Bybit USDT perp from its 4th daily close for 21 days, BTC-hedged, with a hard adverse stop and a funding-squeeze exit (76 listings 2023-2026, 1-DAY)

An event-driven, long-short, BTC-hedged strategy on BYBIT linear USDT perps (Bybit collector, catalog ids <BASE>USDT.BYBIT, 1-DAY-LAST-EXTERNAL bars). Mechanism: tokens that launch on a perp with heavy day-one turnover (airdrops, TGEs, memecoin launches) are priced at peak attention while their float is small. Over the following weeks airdrop recipients, market makers paid in tokens, and early holders hedging locked allocations sell into the float, and attention fades. Hong, Lim and Stein-style attention decay plus IPO long-run underperformance (Ritter 1991) are the TradFi analogues. The 'listing curse' on CEX launches is widely reported (Kaiko and others, 2024-2025). LISTING DETECTION IS POINT-IN-TIME: an alt's launch day is its first daily bar in the data stream, and the strategy sees nothing before that. The universe rule is ex ante, known at entry: average daily turnover (close*volume) over the first 3 daily bars >= $100M. Every instrument below satisfies that rule and was checked on disk (first bar 2023-01 to 2026-01, >=120 daily bars, still printing at 2026-09-30). PRE-STUDY on these 76 events, gross of fees and funding: short at the close of day 3, hold 21 days, BTC-hedged 1:1 notional, close-based +50% adverse stop. Mean +13.4% per event, median +25%, win rate 75%, worst -74% (stop gapped). Mean per year was positive in each of 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 for the 30-day variant; the 2023 sample is small. Without the hedge the mean is about 0, so the edge is RELATIVE underperformance versus BTC, not a bear-market bet, and the hedge is mandatory. Survivorship caveat: the sample contains only listings still trading today. Delisted launches mostly collapsed, which biases the estimate AGAINST the short, but a squeezed-then-delisted name would be missing from the sample too. This differs from the abandoned Binance 'post-listing lottery-premium decay' run, which died on data_unavailable (one leg had no bars) rather than on its premise. This one uses Bybit, whose launch coverage is broader and every leg verified locally, plus a turnover-qualified ex-ante universe, a shorter 21-day clock, a hard intrabar stop, and a funding-squeeze exit. Fills under-represented buckets: BYBIT venue (2.3% vs >=5% target), long-short (16.7% vs long-only 83%), multi-instrument, event-driven non-calendar trigger. PER-TRADE ECONOMICS: gross capture about 13% of short-leg notional, against a Bybit round trip of 0.11% on the short leg and the hedge. Funding paid by shorts on crowded launches averaged a few % per 30 days, with outliers near -20% (KAITO, MYX), which the funding exit is designed to cut. A net expectation of 3-6% per short is about 30-50x the round-trip cost. PERFORMANCE: per-bar work must be O(1): keep per-instrument counters/small fixed-length arrays, never rescan history; funding via supp_as_of/supp_window only.