There was more than enough funds to list on tier 1 exchanges, the reason why the team chose not to was because the core team had to reveal their identity in which they chose not to, so they persisted in doing exchange competitions. Its quite obvious even if they were to be listed on any tier 1 exchange the result would have ended up the same. (same as KuCoin)
Unfortunately, combination of anonymous Devs and huge pre-mined Dev fund can be unacceptable for many big exchanges and investors.
Even though TA for BTC can sometimes be helpful, in case of DeepOnion, TA is rather for fun. The market is way too small.