Jan 20, 2019 at 13:14 // News

Coin Idol Author

The crypto market has been pretty bearish over all of 2018. Many investors lost faith in crypto and gave up trading. Digital currency exchanges have had a lot of troubles over this period too. Apart from low trading volumes and insufficient user activity, what are the other threats that crypto exchanges have to deal with?

Are Crypto Exchanges Doomed?

Crypto exchanges, which were booming during the bull market, have had to face an unpleasant reality and survive in the conditions of paltry market caps. As for the future, the situation may become even more challenging, as competition for a customer will only increase.

According to the Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI), which released its report in November, only four digital currency exchanges had more than 100,000 active users. The BTI defined “active users” as the average number of logged users per day.

As we can see from the picture above, Coinbase had the largest number of daily users, at 421,909 in November. Then Binance followed with 312,801 active users. Two last exchanges of top 4 were Okex and Huobi with 105,609 and 101,873 respectively. However, only two crypto exchanges remained in the December report as those having over 100,000 active users. Coinbase had 323,409 and Binance was visited by 361,458 users each day.

Regulation Can Ruin Everything

Let’s take a look at a scenario where countries try to prohibit citizens from using foreign crypto trading platforms. If it happens, consolidation will definitely be the most obvious solution not only on national but also continental levels.

Under these circumstances, countries with tough policies regarding fintech and cryptos may leave crypto exchanges without any business at all in the future. Even if it may seem impossible, as most regulators and governments have shown no interest or mild support for virtual coins, there are examples of countries shutting down their local crypto exchanges.