Centralized Crypto Exchanges Saw Major Monthly Volume Uptick in April, Report Shows

Centralized cryptocurrency exchanges saw a major uptick in traded volume this April, the new April 2019 Exchange Review from crypto data provider Cryptocompare has revealed on May 20.

Among top fiat-to-crypto platforms, monthly volumes overall increased by a solid 85%. While itself experiencing a 47% drop in volumes, major South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb was the top exchange by total volume in April overall, reporting $17 billion.

Bithumb was followed by Upbit and Bitfinex at 8.7 billion USD (up 20%) and 6.7 billion USD (up 114%) respectively, the report continues. While Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp and Coinsbit all similarly experienced an increase in volumes in April, crypto exchange Liquid reported a decrease, according to CryptoCompare.

Among crypto-crypto platforms, the average volume increase was reportedly 57%. China-based FCoin — unlike in previous months — was the largest exchange by monthly volume at $37.1 billion (up 300%), followed by OKEx and ZB at $35.1 billion (up 12.4%) and $32.4 billion (up 18.8%) respectively.

In terms of decentralized exchanges (DEX) in April, Ethermium remained the largest DEX in the market with $194 million, despite seeing a 42% volume drop. WavesDEX saw $32.5 million (up 3.5%), followed by IDEX at $31.4 million (up 15.9%).

Decentralized platforms accounted for just 0.068% of global spot exchange volumes, trading a monthly total of $317 million USD in April, CryptoCompare notes.

Another trend identified in the report was a 124% increase in the volume of exchanges using a transaction fee mining model, having traded $115 billion in April. Nonetheless, exchanges charging taker fees still traded $352 billion (up 30%), remaining the dominant fee type at 75.1% of total volume.

As reported this January, the 2018 Cryptocurrency Exchange Annual Report from crypto and blockchain research organization TokenInsight found that DEXes account for 19% of the global exchange ecosystem, with trading volumes on DEXes amounting to less than 1% of those on centralized exchanges.

This month, crypto market cap tracker CoinMarketCap announced that it will remove exchanges from its calculations if they fail to provide mandatory data by June. The decision came on the heels of recently sparked controversies over allegedly fake or artificially volume reporting among unregulated exchanges in the industry.