Last month, the crypto market witnessed its historic crash, when bitcoin declined by almost 50% within 24 hours. However, this was only to the disadvantage of the traders, as the trading platforms rather recorded massive gains during that period.

March was a record-breaking month for most of the leading crypto exchanges, with a single exchange trading $11.8 million in just 1 minute. According to a report by crypto analytic firm, CryptoCompare, these exchanges hit an all-time high trading volume of $75.9 billion between March 12 and 13. Giant exchanges like Binance and BitMEX accounted for $21.6 billion representing 28.5% of the total trading volume.

These massive earnings by the exchanges shows how they benefit even in times when the market is crashing. This is because, the exchanges primarily make their money from transaction fees and as such are generally immune to price falls.

The March 12 crash led to loss of about $25 billion from Bitcoin’s total market cap. This subsequently led to a decrease in the entire crypto market cap and triggered a flurry of panic trading. The exchanges made their profits from these panic trading, whether the price moved upward or downward.

Bitfinex crypto exchange witnessed the highest volume throughout the 1st hour of the crash. According to the report, Bitfinex accounted for 40% of all Top Tier exchange volume, trading $11.8 million in a single minute. Meanwhile, Binance which became the largest Top Tier exchange by volume in March, recorded an increase of 19.2% in its trading volume.

These crypto exchanges did not only benefit from higher trading volumes last month due to the crash, they also reported a considerable increase in user sign-ups. Many of them sited the COVID-19 pandemic as the probable cause of this influx.