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For some time now, crypto news has been favoring some exchanges, such as Crypto.com and Coinbase, at the expense of others.
The main battleground at the moment seems to be crypto derivatives.
The latest crypto news about Crypto.com and Coinbase
The news that has contributed most to this dynamic has certainly been the legal action taken in the US by the CFTC against Binance.
This initiative by the government agency that oversees the commodity and futures markets, concerns specifically the trading of derivatives, and futures in particular.
Although this is fundamentally just a bureaucratic matter, it cannot be downgraded to a mere administrative affair, because it effectively cuts off the world’s largest crypto exchange from what is the most liquid crypto market ever.
Moreover, this news was compounded by another, widely predicted, one that caused a very sharp drop in spot trading volumes on Binance, namely the removal of zero fees on trading of major Bitcoin trading pairs.
This triggered a small flight of users from Binance to other platforms, generating a kind of scramble to try to grab as many fleeing users as possible.
To be clear, BTC/USDT on Binance is by far the single trading pair with the highest volumes within the entire crypto spot market. Until 21 March, when the zero fee promotion was still active, daily trading volumes were well above 400,000 BTC. By 1 April those volumes had plummeted to 30,000 BTC, or less than a tenth. Yesterday the dollar volume was just over 1.3 billion.
The second largest Bitcoin trading pair on Binance has become BTC/TUSD, which until 21 April had negligible volumes. However, the approximately $0.6 billion in trading yesterday is nowhere near enough to replace the tens of billions lost on the main pair. Not even the third trading pair, BTC/BUSD, with its scarce 0.3 billion is able to do so.
Crypto.com and Coinbase exchanges
Coinbase in particular has benefited from this dynamic.
Indeed, it is worth noting that the US is the largest market in the world for cryptocurrencies, and Coinbase is the largest US exchange.
Yesterday, along with the three trading pairs on Binance, the fourth overall for Bitcoin on the spot markets was precisely BTC/USD on Coinbase, which is the trading pair in fiat dollars, not stablecoin. However, it is still a long way behind the former, at just over $0.2 billion.
So in reality even the shift to other exchanges has not been able to make up for the sharp drop in exchanges on Binance due to the suspension of the zero fee promotion.
It is enough to consider that, overall, while a peak of $50 billion in total trading on all spot pairs in Bitcoin on all exchanges was reached on 20 March, yesterday the volume had plummeted to just above $10 billion, which is 80% less.
However, yesterday was Sunday, which is a day when many professional financial traders do not work.
What is certain is that Coinbase is among the exchanges that are benefiting most from the crypto news in recent days.
Another exchange that could benefit is Crypto.com, not so much because of its trading volumes, which remain far lower than Coinbase’s, but more so because of its services related to cryptocurrency payments using Visa cards.
Analyzing the market value of its CRO token reveals that 2023 had started out very well, with +57% from the beginning of the year until 21 February, but thereafter there was a 30% drop until 10 March. As early as the following day, a rebound was triggered, ending on 14 March with +23%.
This seems to indicate that some positive interest has been focused on Crypto.com over the past thirty days, but not enough to return the price of CRO to its annual highs.
Competition with other crypto exchanges
There are many other exchanges that are trying to take advantage of the situation.
The Gemini case is emblematic in this respect, with a recently undertaken initiative that has not started yet.
It is not easy to move into a gap that has been created so recently, and so suddenly, so much so that for now the only exchange that has perhaps managed to take advantage of it a bit already, albeit not by much, is Coinbase itself.
For instance, as far as the crypto derivatives market is concerned, where Binance has problems are in some countries including the US, it remains the unchallenged leader, with trading volume and open interest far above its main competitors, including OKX, XT.com and Bybit.
However, while in terms of trading volume Binance remains the leader in the crypto derivatives market, in terms of open interest it appears to have been surpassed by CoinEx and Deepcoin, where volumes are significantly lower.
Indeed, while on Deepcoin the volumes are in line with those of its main competitors, on CoinEx they are so low that it is doubtful that the true Open Interest is really that high.
It is worth noting that in terms of Open Interest, Crypto.com in this special ranking comes in fifth place, surpassing even Bybit.