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- South Korea’s Bithumb Becomes World’s Largest Crypto Exchange by Total Volume in February, Coinbase Trades Most Bitcoin to USD
South Korea’s Bithumb Becomes World’s Largest Crypto Exchange by Total Volume in February, Coinbase Trades Most Bitcoin to USD
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This report provides a broad overview of the crypto exchange market as a whole, focusing on historical analyses that relate to futures volumes, web traffic, predominant fee model and so on. CryptoCompare also focuses on how volumes have developed historically for the top trans-fee mining and decentralized exchanges.
Top Exchange Volumes
Bithumb was the top exchange by total volume in February, followed by Binance and ZB. Bithumb’s total trading volume in February was 26.8 billion USD (up 2.8% since January).
Meanwhile, Binance traded a total of 18.9 billion USD (up 8%), followed by ZB at 18.1 billion USD (down 7.8%).
February Trade Snapshot Analysis
Among a selection of top exchanges that trade BTC to USD, Coinbase traded the most at the end of February with over 40,000 trades in a day followed by Bitfinex (23,000) and Bitstamp (11,800). Among the above exchanges, Coinbase also traded the lowest average trade size at 600 USD while other exchanges (Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Kraken, itBit) traded between 1500–2600 USD.
Country Analysis
Malta-registered exchanges represented the majority of trading volume, followed by those legally registered in Hong Kong and South Korea. Monthly trading volumes from Malta-registered exchanges increased 8% since January, while those of Hong Kong and South Korea-registered exchanges increased 12% and 6% respectively.
Predominant Fee Type
Exchanges that charge taker fees represented 84% of total exchange volume in February, while those that implement trans-fee mining (TFM) represented 14%. Fee-charging exchanges traded a total of 186 billion USD in February, while those that implement TFM traded 31.4 billion USD. The remaining volume represented trading by exchanges that charge no trading fees, at 3.1 billion USD.
Futures Trading
Total futures trading volume from exchanges bitFlyerFX and BitMEX totaled 54.8 billion USD in February, while volume from spot exchanges totaled 220 billion USD. Meanwhile, CME’s average Bitcoin futures contract trading volumes increased from 79.9 million USD in January to 98.9 million USD in February while those of CBOE decreased from a daily average of 8.1 million USD to 5.6 million USD in February.
According to a mid-March volume snapshot, OKEx traded the highest daily derivatives volume (swaps and futures) at 1.76 billion USD, followed by BitflyerFX (1.15 billion USD) and BitMEX (708 million USD). Exchanges Deribit (67 million USD), CryptoFacilities (27 million USD), CME (61 million USD) and CBOE (13 million USD) still represented only a small proportion of this.
Fiat Capabilities
Trading volume from exchanges that offer fiat pairs did not change from January to February (63 billion USD), however that of crypto to crypto exchanges increased by 20% to 157 billion USD. Following this increase in crypto to crypto trading volume, fiat to crypto trading volume represented 29% of total spot volume, down from 33% in January.
Bitcoin to Fiat Volumes
In February, 46% of all Bitcoin trading into fiat was made up of the US dollar, down from 48% in January. BTC to USD volumes decreased from 1.47 million BTC to 1.24 million BTC in February (-15.3%). Bitcoin trading into JPY formed 33% of Bitcoin into fiat in February, up from 30% in January; volumes remained stable at ~0.9 million BTC. Meanwhile, BTC trading into EUR and KRW decreased by 22% and 14.6% respectively. In February, USD, JPY, EUR and KRW made up 95% of total trading from Bitcoin into fiat.
Bitcoin to Stablecoin Volumes
In February, BTC trading into USDT represented 70% of total volume (fiat or stable coin), totaling 6.24 million BTC. USDT continues to be the most popular stable coin followed by PAX, USDC and GUSD. USDT represents 98% of the total Bitcoin trading into these stablecoins.
New charts in the full report include an overview of derivatives exchanges with volume data from OKEx, CryptoFacilities and Deribit. In addition, there is a short trade data analysis for the end of February covering a selection of exchanges that trade either BTC to USD or USDT.