Crypto trading volumes experienced their first surge in activity since March as the majority of digital assets began their recovery from the recent grim price action, 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 July review show that volume on crypto derivatives exchanges rose by 13.4 percent compared to the previous month, coming in at $3.12 trillion. This is a welcomed increase after derivatives markets had seen five straight months of decreased volumes.
The rise in derivatives trading volume indicates an increase in speculative activity as traders believe there is room for further upside, the report notes. July’s turnover was also amplified this month as traders speculated on the impact of the Ethereum Merge and potential hard forks.
In contrast, crypto spot volumes took another step back in July, falling by 1.3 percent to $1.39 trillion, the lowest turnover recorded since December 2020. This figure includes $1.27 trillion in transactions that exchanged hands at top venues, which account for over 91 percent of all volumes.
Binance was the largest spot exchange in July by monthly trading volume with $439 billion, or a market share of 54 percent. Interestingly though, spot trading volume on institutional cryptocurrency exchange AAX rose 26.5 percent to $57.2 billion, making it the largest exchange by volume after Binance for the first time in its history.
AAX, powered by the London Stock Exchange Group’s LSEG Technology, has seen a spike in trading volume since the start of the year, rising 285 percent from $14.9 billion during the period.
FTX and OKX followed AAX, with a trading volume of $56.9 billion and $55.6 billion, respectively. Meanwhile, Coinbase continued its decline in spot trading volume, falling 12.8 percent to $51.5 billion.
Crypto derivative shine
Trading activity across spot markets stayed relatively consistent with the previous month as cryptocurrency prices began to slowly recover following a dismal couple of months marred by high-profile contagion events. A daily volume maximum of $71.2 billion was traded on July 19, down 26.0 percent from the intra-month high in June.
Binance also led the way into the derivative markets with 64 percent ($2 trillion) of total volumes in July. This was followed by OKX (15.3 percent market share, $478 billion) and Bybit (9.9 percent market share, $309 billion).
Trading of options contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which focuses on institutional investors, dropped by a third in July with 2,413 contracts traded within the month.
The regulated exchange said total ETH + BTC futures volumes, as measured by the value of contracts, fell 9.94 percent to $36.5 billion.
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.
