Cryptocurrency spot volumes surged during August 2020, with the top tier exchanges dominating the volatile digital asset markets, according to a report from the Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange (BitMEX).
The leading digital currency derivatives trading platform noted that in August 2020, the trading volumes on top-tier crypto exchanges grew 58.3% to $529 billion, meanwhile, the lower-tier volumes surged 30.2% to $291 billion. According to BitMEX’s market report, the top-tier exchanges now account for 64% of total volume (compared to only 60% during July 2020).
As noted by BitMEX:
“Binance (Grade A) was the largest Top-Tier exchange by volume in August, trading $124.9 billion (up 83%). This was followed by Huobi Global (Grade BB) trading $65.0 billion (up 176%), and OKEx (Grade BB) trading $64.7 billion (up 47%).”
The exchange also mentioned:
“Derivatives volumes increased 53.6% in August to $711.7 billion. Meanwhile, total spot volumes have increased by 49.6% to $944.9 billion. Derivatives continue to represent just over 40% of total market share. Derivatives exchanges saw significant increases in trading volume in August. Huobi (up 44.7%), OKEx (up 69.1%) and Binance (up 74.0%) led with $208.5 billion, $190.8 billion and $184.6 billion traded respectively. BitMEX traded $72.5 billion (up 43.6%) in August 2020.”
BitMEX further noted that the monthly CME futures contract volumes for Bitcoin grew 36.3% since July 2020. They reached 203,867 cryptocurrency futures contracts traded last month.
CME’s total crypto derivatives volumes surged 55.7%, which was “in line with many unregulated derivatives competitors to reach $12.02 billion,” BitMEX confirmed.
The exchange added that trading activity across spot markets during August was significantly higher when compared to the activity from July 2020. This, as the Bitcoin (BTC) price managed to stay above the $11,000 mark. Available data shows that the “higher risk exchanges have generally lost market share, as users begin shifting to lower risk (Top-Tier) exchanges,” BitMEX claims.
It also noted that the Top-Tier exchange volume, chosen based on BitMEX’s Exchange Benchmark methodology, surged 58.3% in August, when compared to volume from July 2020.
According to BitMEX, crypto exchanges that charge taker fees accounted for about 84% of total exchange volume during August 2020 (compared to around 82% in July), meanwhile, those that implement Trans-Fee Mining (TFM) accounted for around 16%.
BitMEX further noted that fee-charging digital asset exchanges traded $685 billion in August, which is up 50.13% since July 2020. Exchanges that implement TFM models traded a total of $125 billion last month, which is also more than a 50% increase from July.
(Note: for a more detailed breakdown of trading activity, check here.)
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