Fiat-to-crypto exchanges, including Coinbase, are witnessing a huge decline in trading volumes. At the same time, crypto-to-crypto exchanges remain on the winning side with OKEx hitting a new record in July.
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A sharp decline
According to a recent U.Today report, cryptocurrency exchanges are on track to double their earnings in 2018 compared to the previous year while facing a very bearish market. It doesn’t mean that all crypto exchanges are thriving- San Francisco-based behemoth Coinbase appears to be suffering from a huge 83 percent in trading. To put it into perspective, its July’s trading volume only reached $3.9 bln, a very humble figure compared to the $21 bln all-time high.
However, Coinbase is not the only company that has experienced such major downtrends, since other fiat-to-crypto exchanges have pretty much the same losses in 2018 (while still outperforming the 2017 numbers). Bitstamp also lost 73 percent of its trading volume. Binance, the second largest crypto exchange, is poised to make a staggering amount of $1 bln in 2018, but its volumes have also dropped to $11.3 bln.
We have our winner!
On the flip side, Crypto-to-crypto exchanges have managed to preserve their trading volumes or even increase them. OKEx comes out as a true winner in this situation, having experienced a 97 percent spike in just a month.
Many speculate that such a drastic difference in trading volumes could be related to a controversial stablecoin Tether that is available on those exchanges with surging trading volumes. Earlier this month, Tether issues a mammoth-sized amount of new USDT tokens. It is almost worth mentioning that the volume of BTC adopted by merchants is also down by 87 percent from its September’s peak.
Arman Shirinyan
U.Today Editorial Team
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin