Crypto Exchange Trading Volumes Sink to 3-Year Low While HODLers Sit on Sidelines

Centralized crypto exchanges are seeing trading volumes dwindle as the bear market bites deeper. Moreover, trading on some of the industry’s largest exchanges has slumped more than 20% in the last month alone. Industry outlet Wu Blockchain has detailed the dire state of centralized exchange volumes in a released report on October 16.

Crypto Exchange Trading Falls

Spot trading volumes on major exchanges decreased by 19.3% month-on-month in September. It has fallen to its lowest level since October 2020, three years ago, the report revealed. Almost half of the exchanges analyzed had dropped more than 20% of their volume from August to September. The biggest losses were on KuCoin and Crypto.com, dropping 32% and 31% of their monthly trading volumes, respectively. Binance trading volume fell almost 30% in September to $133 billion from $189 billion in the previous month. Huobi lost 25% in a fall from $31 billion in August to $23 billion in September. Moreover, OKx’s trading volume fell 21% month-on-month, while Coinbase lost 20%. The total decline for the month across the 13 exchanges measured was 19.3%, from $406 billion in August to $328 billion in September.

Moreover, crypto derivatives volumes also declined across the board. The total monthly decline in futures trading volumes was around 15% from $1.9 trillion to $1.6 trillion in September. Crypto.com, KuCoin, and Bitget saw the largest declines in derivatives trading for the month. However, the report did note that some of the trading figures may be influenced by bot or wash trading. Additionally, web traffic to major crypto exchanges has also fallen in September. The average traffic decline month-on-month across the exchanges was 17.4%.

Bear Market Blues

According to DeFiLlama, decentralized exchange volumes have been relatively stable over the past few months. The current weekly volume for DEXes is around $11.7 billion, it noted. The total value locked across DeFi continues to melt and is currently sitting at just $41 billion. CoinGecko reports that the global cryptocurrency market cap is $1.12 trillion, a 2.24% change in the last 24 hours. However, it has moved very little over the past two months, with assets trading in a tight range at current levels. Bitcoin reclaimed the $28,000 level following a fake news-induced pump on Monday but appears to be breaking down again and returning to previous levels.