Lower-Rated Cryptocurrency Exchanges Have Been Gaining Market Share, Report Finds

A report published by leading cryptocurrency data provider CryptoCompare has found lower-rated crypto exchanges have been gaining significant market share.

The report, CryptoCompare’s September 2019 Exchange Review, covers various aspects of the cryptocurrency market, and assesses exchanges’ trading volumes and pricing data, predominant fee types, derivatives products and data, and the volumes of fiat, crypto, and stablecoins.

 The report also goes through the performance of the space’s top decentralized exchanges, as well as of those using the controversial trans-fee mining model. CryptoCompare’s co-founder and CEO Charles Hayter said in a press release:

Our monthly Exchange Review offers detailed analysis of activity and developments across cryptocurrency exchanges. The report aims to bring greater transparency to the digital asset class by providing high quality data that can be relied upon for decision-making.

The firm’s September 2019 Exchange Review notably found that cryptocurrency exchanges with an “E” rating according to its Exchange Benchmark Ratings, have represented a total trading volume of $179.06 billion in September, after seeing a 31.5% increase since August.

This as exchanges with the highest rating – AA – represented 3% of the total trading volume, at $14.87 billion. Exchanges rated A and B represented 14.3% and 4.7% respectively. The lion’s share of trading volume is, as such, on exchanges rated D-E.

Among the top crypto-to-crypto exchanges by trading volumes were BitMax, a D-rated exchange that traded $28 billion in September, and ZB, an E-rated exchange that traded $26.9 billion. Binance, which is A-rated, came in third place in terms of trading volume.

The report further found that institutional interest in Bitcoin products has seemingly been declining, as volumes in CME’s bitcoin futures product dropped around 18.3% from $5.9 billion in August to $4.83 billion in September, while Grayscale’s Bitcoin trust (GBTC) dropped 37.5% in the same period.

Cryptocurrency derivatives market has reportedly been dominated by crypto exchange OKEx, which had a monthly trading volume of $90.3 billion in September, after seeing a drop of nearly 15% from August. Huobi came in second place with a trading volume of $84.5 billion.

Featured image via Austin Distel on Unsplash.