Binance, the embattled crypto exchange, continues to defy gravity as it posts the highest spot volumes of all exchanges in the world for the 15th straight month.
The exchange has been at loggerheads with many regulators in many parts of the world with it getting shutdown in countries like China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, UK, and others as well. So, it is indeed a surprise that it continues to hold on to the top spot and see volumes grow month on month showing how irresistible crypto trading is becoming for traders and investors all over the world. The battles that it has been having with the regulators seem to have done little to dampen the mood around the trading at the exchange. The total spot exchange volume traded for September was $828 billion which is 10.2% over the volume from August this year.
But the surprising aspect of these rising traded volumes is the fact that the volume of BTC traded at the exchange has been one of the lowest in recent years. This could be partly attributed to the fact that the prices of BTC have been stable and ranging during September but it could also be due to the increasing interest in other coins like Ethereum and Solana over the past few months. The crypto market is maturing and the domination of BTC, though it continues, is lessening steadily over the last few months which is good for the overall market. The total BTC traded into fiat or stablecoins was 6.9 million BTC.
To show that the interest is not just among the retail traders, the institutional traders have also been piling one at the CME exchange with the BTC CME Options up by around 36% which is the largest increase since June 2020 showing that even with a ranging market, the institutional investors are entering into the market and largely positioning themselves in the market.
On the other hand, in the derivatives space, the pace of growth in the open interest for ethereum continues to outbid that in the bitcoin derivatives market as the ethereum open interest grew by 4.7% to $5.8 billion in September while the BTC open interest fell 3.7% month on month to $11.9 billion. This is further proof that the total dominance of the crypto market by BTC trading is slowly receding.
