Bitfinex to Remove Dozens of Trading Pairs to ‘Optimize Trading Experience’

Major exchanges are often bogged down with illiquid trading pairs that no one uses. Seldom ever do you hear of exchanges cleaning them up. Bitfinex, however, has just announced it will be removing 87 of them from its platform.

87 Trading Pairs to Be Removed from Bitfinex

In a recent announcement, cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex revealed plans to remove 87 trading pairs. This will be done to “optimize the trading experience” due to these pairs presumably being illiquid.

Bitfinex will remove 87 trading pairs, commencing on 26/03/2020, to optimize the trading experience for our user base.

➡️Find the list of trading pairs at https://t.co/9ZVoJ9SMBd

— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) March 20, 2020

Some of the trading pairs involve some known names in the cryptocurrency industry. For example, Bancor (BNT), Request (REQ), Polymath (POY), Storj (STJ), QASH (QSH), Zilliqa (ZIL), SpankChain (SPK), UTRUST (UTK), and others will have their BTC trading pairs removed from Bitfinex entirely.

Many other trading pairs with ETH will also be removed like Decentraland (MANA) and Qtum (QTM).

You may recall some of these cryptocurrency projects if you were around since 2017. Many of them used to boast significant volume, but it seems like interest has dried up entirely since then. Many replies to the announcement likened it to a “cleanup” that was desperately needed.

Cleanup should be good for Bitcoin. 🙂

— Gabor Gurbacs (@gaborgurbacs) March 20, 2020

The full list of soon-to-be-canceled trading pairs can be found in Bitfinex’s official announcement. 

Some Altcoins See Diminishing Trading Volume

Although there was some enthusiasm at the start of the year, the global market rout has severely affected trading volumes for all cryptocurrencies. It is currently unclear whether Bitfinex was planning this cancellation for some time or if it was a recent decision.

Bitfinex remains a top exchange for Bitcoin traders, however. In fact, it usually leads the market sentiment when it comes to margin trading alongside BitMEX. Last December, BeInCrypto also reported that Bitfinex was among the first to integrate Lightning Network for instant BTC deposits and withdrawals. 

However, Bitfinex has also been subject to significant scrutiny in the past year, especially over its close association with Tether (USDT). A $1.4 trillion dollar lawsuit is still in the courts which accuses the exchange and its stablecoin of being behind the “largest bubble in history.” Tether Treasury has also been on a 240M USDT printing spree in the past few days, which has raised eyebrows.