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Bitcoin and BTC Futures Analysis: January 2019 CryptoCompare Exchange Review

February 20, 2019

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The January Exchange Review focuses on analyses that relate to exchange volumes, and includes an analysis of the highest volume producing jurisdictions, as well as market segmentation by exchange fee model.

We also evaluate how spot volumes vs futures volumes have developed historically to date, including both crypto exchange (BitMEX and BitflyerFX) and traditional exchange (CBOE and CME) futures volumes. Finally, we conduct an analysis of bitcoin trading into various fiats and stablecoins, as well as an overview of how exchange web traffic has changed over the previous few months.

Macro Analysis and Market Segmentation

Country AnalysisMaltese-registered exchanges represented the majority of trading volume, followed by those legally registered in Hong Kong and Samoa. Monthly trading volume from Maltese-registered exchanges dropped 17% since December, while that of Hong Kong and Samoa-registered exchanges decreased by 5.5% and increased by 9% respectively.

Predominant Fee TypeExchanges that charge taker fees represented 84% of total exchange volume in January, while those that implement trans-fee mining (TFM) represent 15%. Fee-charging exchanges traded a total of 141 billion USD in January, while those that implement TFM traded 25 billion USD. The remaining volume represented trading by exchanges that charge no trading fees, totalling 2.8 billion USD.

Futures TradingThe proportion of futures trading volume decreased from 28% in December to 24% in January. bitFlyerFX traded the highest amount of BTC futures volume in January with a daily average transactional value of 1.13 billion USD (down 23% since December), followed by BitMEX perpetual futures at 665 million USD (down 41% since December). Futures products from traditional regulated exchanges (CME and CBOE) represented 11.7% of the Bitcoin to USD futures market in January, up from 6.36% in December.

Fiat CapabilitiesMonthly trading volume from exchanges that offer fiat pairs decreased by 26.5% in January to 37.5 billion USD, while crypto-to-crypto exchange volume decreased by 7.2% to 132 billion USD. Following this large decline in volume from exchanges that offer fiat trading pairs, in January they represented 22% of total spot volume, down from 26% in December.

Web TrafficTotal exchange web traffic continues its downward trend along with spot volumes, each dropping 13.5% and 12.4% respectively in January. According to calculations based on Alexa data, total monthly unique visitors across CryptoCompare exchanges decreased from 12 million in December to 10.4 million in January.

Bitcoin to Fiat VolumesIn January, 48% of Bitcoin trading into fiat was made up of the US Dollar (1.47 million BTC), down from 57% in December. BTC trading into JPY decreased less (-24%) than that traded into USD (-49%) and EUR (-37%) since December. The USD, JPY and EUR made up 90% of total trading from Bitcoin into fiat in the previous month and maintained dominance in January at 89% of BTC to fiat volume.

Bitcoin to Stablecoin Volumes

Bitcoin trading into USDT represented 65% of trading into stablecoins and fiat coins in January, up from the 63.7% seen in December. USDT, PAX, USDC and GUSD represent the most popular stablecoins in terms of Bitcoin trading volume. BTC trading into PAX increased 66% in January at 114,000 BTC in total; however, USDT still represents that majority at 5.9 million BTC.?Exchange Volumes

Top Exchange Volumes – ZB was the top exchange by total volume in January, followed by Binance and OKEX. The total volume for ZB in January was 19.6 billion USD, a 6.2% increase from December. The total volumes for Binance and OKEX fell 15% and 19.4% respectively in January.

Trans-Fee Mining Exchanges – CoinBene was the largest TFM exchange in January, followed by ZBG and EXX. CoinBene traded 10 billion USD in total volume in January, down 3.2% since December. ZBG traded 6 billion USD and EXX traded 5.5 billion USD, up 18 and 20% since December respectively.

Decentralised Exchanges – Ethermium was the largest DEX in January, followed by WavesDEX and OpenLedger. DEXs continue to represent only a small fraction of global spot exchange volume (0.19%), trading a monthly total of 385 million USD.

To read the full CryptoCompare report, click here.