April 22, 2020 – The brand new report from TokenInsight covers Centralized Exchanges, Decentralized Exchanges, Exchange-Based Token Trends, Regulation Overview, User Trends, Survey and Spot Exchange Ratings Update.
Market Overview:
$ 6.6 Trillion: That’s how much the trading volume of the entire digital asset spot market in Q1 2020, increased by 104% quarterly.
The market in Q1 2020 was extremely volatile, the March 12 market plunge can be described as follows: the global financial market downturn created a liquidity cascading event that translates into a cryptocurrency market downturn, dries up the market liquidity quickly and the market itself initiated a deleveraging process to return the market in a healthy level.
Centralized Exchanges:
$6.47 Trillion: The total trading volume of 279 centralized exchanges in this quarter was around $ 6.47 trillion. There are still plenty of fake volumes in the emerging centralized exchanges. The whole industry still needs a more authentic voice. Some exchanges may take advantages of investors’ ignorance of the digital asset trading market with blindly generating noise and claiming that the exchanges have certain licenses.
Due to the current regulatory uncertainty of the digital asset market and the characteristics of centralized platforms that are easily manipulated by malicious parties, investors should keep their eyes open, and do not readily believe in the promotion of their websites and some media.
Binance still ranks the first in terms of the trading volume for the spot trading market, followed by OKEx, Huobi Global, Coinbase Pro and Kraken.
Binance has 39% of the total market share in the top-tier exchange segment; OKEx ranks the second, with a market share of about 30%; meanwhile, Huobi Global’s market share is slightly below 20%. Except for the top three, no other exchange accounts for more than 10% of the market share.
It is not difficult to see that the top tier spot exchange positions in the industry have been relatively solidified. In addition, the data shows that market share of more than 1% and more than 10% are the inspection standards for the exchange’s entry into the industry and become industry leaders, respectively.
Huobi futures trading volume ratio is about 3.56x than the spot market; OKEx is about 2.9x; Binance is about 1.34x. In terms of business planning, all exchanges are working on derivatives business and the overall digital asset industry’s centre of gravity is accelerating to the derivatives market represented by futures.
Decentralized Exchanges
$180 Billion: That’s the total trading volume of the 16 decentralized exchanges included in this quarter. One of the most eye-catching ones is Etherflyer, which is almost monopolizing the entire decentralized exchange market, accounting for more than 90% of the market. Especially after the 312 market plunge, there should be a “big player” to carry out a massive order operation on Etherflyer.
The Performance of Exchange Based Tokens
41% of the exchange-based token returned positively in Q1 2020. Exchanges are some of the only institutions in the digital asset industry that can generate stable profits. The value of the exchange-based token depends on the fundamentals of the exchange.
In the first quarter of 2020, 41% of the exchange-based token prices have increased, and five of them have increased by more than 20%; OKB, BHT, ZT (ZBG Token), LEO and ZB. Among them, ZT rose nearly 50% in 2020Q1, ranking among the best in emerging exchanges. The future upward momentum will come from the fundamentals of the exchange.
On the 12th of March, while bitcoin price plummeted to a lower level, almost every single exchange-based token returned to the price level of the beginning of the year.
The exchange-based token corresponding to the three major exchanges (Binance, Huobi, and OKEx) experienced a strong rebound immediately after the plunge. Except for BNB, the degree of rebound even exceeded Bitcoin. Exchange fundamentals are the new driving force for the rise in the price of its exchange-based token.
User Trends
75% Independent User Visits: concentrated in the TOP10 exchanges, and the remaining 25% is distributed among the other 40 exchanges. The exchanges with TOP3 unique users are Coinbase Pro, Binance, and ZB.
The United States, Russia, and Turkey are the three countries with the most cumulative visits in the first quarter of the exchange, followed by Vietnam, the United Kingdom, and France. American users have higher visits on several exchanges such as Coinbase Pro, Binance, and Kraken. In terms of absolute volume, the top exchanges used by users in the United States are Coinbase Pro and Binance.
The United Kingdom is the primary source of users of Coinbase Pro except for the United States, and users in Russia, Turkey, and Vietnam also account for a relatively high proportion of Binance users. From the perspective of the percentage of visitor countries, most users of exchanges are relatively scattered except that Coinbase Pro accounts for more than 60% of American users.
KuCoin, Poloniex, and Binance all achieved more than 4.5% community growth in Q1 2020, ahead of other exchanges. The second group is led by Kraken, OKEx, Coinbase Pro, and Yobit, which achieved an increase of more than 1.5%. The highest percentage of losing community interest came from Cryptopia due to the hack, which has a 1.4% decrease in community followers. The number of followers for the remaining exchanges did not change much.
The most significant improvement was achieved by the KuCoin exchange, which increased from -0.72% in the previous quarter to 4.69% in the current quarter. From the distribution of Twitter followers, Binance, Bittrex, and Bitfinex have apparent advantages. Among them, Binance still has the most extensive and solid user base, the number of followers has exceeded 1.1 million, and the growth rate is accelerating.
You can access the full report in pdf: TokenInsight 2020 Q1 Spot Exchange Industry Report