Being the world’s top crypto exchange by trade volume is no mean feat in this ever expanding industry. That accolade has been held by Binance for some time now however there could be a shift at the top as a newcomer has entered the fray.

According to coinmarketcap.com Binance is no longer at the top spot. It has been overtaken recently by OKEx as the two exchange giants battle it out but a third and relatively unknown exchange has now taken the crown. CoinEx is currently handling a daily trade volume of $1.46 billion, or 230,180 BTC, according to CMC stats. This puts it above Binance which is trading $1.25 billion per day.

Rounding out the top five at the time of writing is OKEx in third with a daily volume of $880 million, Huobi in fourth with $465 million and another obscure exchange, ZB.COM in fifth with $410 million. Maybe CMC has adjusted the way it ranks crypto exchanges explaining how two obscure platforms have just shot into the top five global exchanges.

USDT is the crypto of choice on CoinEx with over 92% of the total trade on the exchange being made using Tether. The top pairs traded using the stablecoin are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. CoinEx however does support a further 36 cryptocurrencies.

According to the blurb on its website CoinEx was;

“Founded in December 2017 with Bitmain-led investment, CoinEx is a subsidiary brand of the world’s No.1 BCH mining pool ViaBTC, a global and professional digital coin exchange service provider.”

It has over 50 employees with offices in Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Singapore. So, on the surface, a minnow compared to Binance, OKEx and Huobi. Like the other exchanges, CoinEX also has its own token, CET, which is based on the ERC20 protocol and has a maximum supply of 10 billion. The token however is not yet listed on CMC but Livecoinwatch reports it as trading at $0.073 and pumping at the moment.

CoinEx recently announced the first CET coin burn of 37.8 million tokens which is may have affected total volume figures:

The latest monthly report also highlights updates from the exchange and plans for the coming quarter which includes an OTC trading option and the addition of more languages.

The crypto exchange market is an increasingly crowded one so it stands to reason that new players will be vying for the top spot. Things will get even more interesting when decentralized exchanges (DEXs) start to gain momentum and the true potential of crypto is unleashed.