Crypto Trading Volumes Surge in September: CryptoCompare Report

The analytics firm focuses mostly on exchange volumes but also records statistics on crypto derivatives, stablecoin trading, and exchange rankings, amongst others. July’s report already showed a pickup in trading, however, daily volumes for Sep. topped $27.6 billion, an increase of almost 2% over July’s figures.

Daily volume from top-tier #digitalasset exchanges reached a record for the year on the 3rd of September 2020 with $27.6bn traded. The previous high for the year was $27.1bn on the 27th of July 2020.

Read the full Exchange Review report: https://t.co/3jq17N0gTa pic.twitter.com/yc3tkIj8wB

— CryptoCompare (@CryptoCompare) October 9, 2020

Derivative and spot trading saw marked declines, both losing a hefty 17.5% from the previous month. Binance reclaimed the top spot in terms of derivative exchange volume, up 10.7% since August, with $164.8 billion exchanging hands.

The Rise of the Crypto DEX

Unsurprisingly, CryptoCompare’s (CC) reports continue to feature stats on the sprawling Decentralized Finance (DeFi) sector. BeInCrypto earlier reported that UniSwap traffic was up some 43% in Sept., exceeding even that of its massive centralized counterpart Coinbase. As part of its report, CC surveyed 26 leading exchanges. One of the key concerns was a notable trend in users moving to decentralized exchange’s (DEX),

Centralised exchanges believed that the anonymity afforded by DEXs was the primary reason (46.2%) users traded on DEXs. Self-custody was the secondary driver with 19.2% of respondents saying this was a feature that attracted users to DEXs.

However, it doesn’t appear to be all gloom and doom for centralized crypto exchanges. They conversely believed that “liquidity” and “fiat compatibility” were strong-enough factors to keep traders coming back. Almost 50% of the respondants said they didn’t have a DEX and 40% said they are “actively building” or “may build” one in the future. As part of its new analyses, CC will now classify exchanges into “Top-tier” and “Lower-tier” exchanges. Despite a breakout in bitcoin from its lengthy consolidation, crypto traders continue to play it safe:

CryptoCompare’s Exchange Benchmark Ranking shows that higher risk exchanges have generally lost market share in the last few months, as users begin shifting to lower risk (Top-Tier) exchanges.