Cryptocurrency exchanges went through a volume fall in September as the price of Bitcoin dipped below the $11k mark, according to a new report by Cryptocompare.
CryptoCompare today published its monthly Exchange Review, which offers widely-quoted insights into the cryptocurrency exchange industry as well as changes to exchanges’ metrics that make up the data provider’s price indices.
Key findings from the September review show that volume on crypto derivatives exchanges fell by 17.5 percent compared to the previous month. In September, the monthly volume hit $635 billion relative to $712 billion in August, which was just enough to top the previous record of $602 billion set back in May 2020.
The bulk of crypto trading happened on exchanges considered by Cryptocompare as Top-Tier, having commanded $429 billion of total volumes.
After having experienced a historic surge in activity the prior month, the decline may be the result of a lull in investor interest during the month in review as top platforms also experienced a notable drop in their monthly turnover.
Binance was the largest derivatives exchange by volume, leading with $164.8 billion (down 10.7 percent since August). This was followed by Huobi Global trading $156.3 billion (down 25.8 percent), while OKEx traded $155.7 billion (down 18.5 percent) and BitMEX lost 30 percent of its monthly volumes, having registered $56.4 billion for September.
FTX was the only derivatives exchange that experienced an increase in volume with $23.89 billion traded in September (up 12 percent since August).
Crypto spot volumes also dropped by 18 percent from $945 billion in August to $676 billion in September, explains the London-based data analytics firm.
Although monthly volume at top venues have decreased since August, daily volumes have reached a record for the year on September 3 where $27.6 billion exchanged hands, surpassing the previous high for the year set at $27.1 billion on July 27.
Options Volumes on CME Rise
Trading volumes at what CryptoCompare calls ‘Lower-Tier’ exchanges also dropped to $248 billion, down 15 percent on a monthly basis from $291 billion in August.
Bucking the overall downtrend, trading of options contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which focuses on institutional investors, increased 80 percent in September with 4,872 contracts traded within the month.
However, this figure was lower than the record monthly high set in June at 8,444 contracts. The regulated exchange said futures volumes, as measured by the number of contracts, was virtually unchanged from August levels coming in at 201,893 in September, but trading value dropped 11 percent to $11.02 billion from $12.0 billion the previous month.
As for previous editions, CryptoCompare’s report includes exchange trade data, news highlights, a market segmentation analysis and metrics of Bitcoin trades against both fiat and stablecoins.
The BTC/USDT pair still represents the majority of BTC traded into fiat or Stablecoin in September at 68.1 percent.
