Top Exchange News in December

OKEx announces its third round of token delistings.

ErisX raises $27.5 million with investments from Fidelity and Nasdaq.

Coinbase supports four more ERC-20 Tokens: MANA, CVC, DNT, LOOM, and DNT.

CEX.IO moved to mandatory user registration.

Coinbase supports DAI, MKR, GNT, and ZIL.

Bitfinex announced USD/USDT leveraged trading with other stable coins to follow.

Binance added two trading pairs with XRP as a base currency: TRX/XRP & XZC/XRP.

Huobi partners with a Russian bank to provide legal services to crypto organizations.

Coinbase CEO highlighted a $300+ million Series E Round in their Q4 update.

Macro Exchange Market Segmentation

1 Market Concentration — The top 10 exchanges represented more than 60% of total spot market volume in December. This has not changed significantly in recent months.

December Market Concentration by Total Exchange Volume

2 Country Analysis — Maltese-registered exchanges represented the majority of trading volume in December, followed by those legally registered in Hong Kong and Samoa. Monthly trading volume from Maltese-registered exchanges dropped 9% since November, while that of Hong Kong and Samoa-registered exchanges increased 2 and 3 % respectively.

Top 5 Exchange Jurisdictions and Largest Constituent Exchanges in December

3 Predominant Fee Type — Exchanges that charge taker fees represented 86% of total exchange volume, while those that implement trans-fee mining structures represented 12%. Trans-fee mining market share increased from 8% in November to 12% in December.

Total Monthly Trading Volume by Predominant Fee Type

4 Futures Trading — The proportion of futures trading volume increased from 22% in November to 28% in December. BitMex XBT perpetual futures volumes increased 17.7% in December while XBTUSD futures of CME and CBOE decreased 45.5% and 48.0% respectively since November. Regulated exchanges (CME and CBOE) represented only 2.88% of the total crypto futures market in December.

Historical Spot vs Futures Daily Trading Volume

Monthly Average Daily Bitcoin USD Futures Volume

5 Fiat Capabilities — Trading volume from exchanges that offer fiat pairs decreased by 40% in December while crypto to crypto exchange volume decreased by 7.7%. Crypto to crypto exchanges represented three quarters of spot volume in December. However, the majority of exchanges offer fiat to crypto trading.

Monthly Total Volume: Crypto to Crypto vs Fiat to Crypto Exchanges

Crypto to Crypto vs Fiat to Crypto Volume and Exchange Count — December

6 Web Traffic — Total exchange web traffic continues its downward trend along with spot volumes, each dropping 3.6% and 20% respectively in December.

Historical Monthly Exchange Market Web Traffic vs Volume

7 KYC Requirements — In December, exchanges that either strictly or partially require KYC represented 77% of monthly spot trading volume.

Historical Segmentation by KYC Requirements

8 Bitcoin to Fiat Volumes — In December, 57% of all of Bitcoin trading into fiat was made up of the USD Dollar, while trading into the Korean Won decreased significantly since the previous month. Proportionally, Bitcoin trading into the USD and JPY increased 14% and 43.4% respectively since November.

Monthly Proportion of Bitcoin Trading into Fiat

9 Stable Coins — Tether (USDT) continues to represent the majority of Bitcoin trading into fiat or stable coins at 65% of total monthly volume in December. In December, the proportion of Bitcoin trading into Tether increased 16.5% since November. Pairs trading from USDT represent the largest markets for stable coins with PAX representing the majority of trading volume in December at 75% of total monthly volume. USDT trading into PAX increased 70% since the previous month.

Daily Bitcoin Trading into Fiat or Stable Coins

Proportion of USDT trading into Other Stable Coins

Exchange Volumes Rankings

Top Exchange Volumes — Binance was the top exchange in December by total monthly volume, followed by OKEX and ZB. Total monthly trading volume among the top 10 exchanges dropped 7.5% on average since November. Binance, OKEX and ZB dropped 13%, 5% and 19% respectively while exchanges BitZ and IDAX contrastingly experienced a 57% and 9% increase in trading volume respectively.

Historical Monthly Volume — Top Exchanges

2. Trans-Fee Mining Exchanges — CoinBene was the largest TFM exchange in December followed by ZBG and EXX. Trans-fee mining exchanges continue to represent a significant proportion of monthly spot volume at 23.2 billion USD in total, or 12% of global spot volume within the crypto industry.

Historical Monthly Volume — Top Transaction-Fee Mining Exchanges

3. Decentralised Exchanges — Ethermium was the largest DEX in December, followed by WavesDEX and IDEX. DEXs continue to represent only a small fraction of global spot exchange volume (0.09%), trading a monthly total of at 254 million USD in December.

Historical Monthly Volume — Top Decentralised Exchanges

Order Book Analysis

For a detailed explanation of our order book methodology please see Appendix A3 — Order Book Analysis Methodology in the latest December Exchange Review here.

- Among top exchanges, average order book depth down for their top 5 markets have fallen steadily, decreasing 22% since November. This is consistent with the bearish trend we have witnessed over the last few months.

- Bitfinex, Kraken and Bitstamp maintained the most stable markets in December, while exchanges CoinBene, Bitforex, IDAX showed thin markets combined with high volumes.