PRESS RELEASE

CME bitcoin futures up 263%; sharp increase in transaction fee mining volumes

London, 20th May 2019: CryptoCompare, the leading provider of cryptocurrency data and indices, today released its April 2019 Exchange Review, offering investors, analysts and regulators analysis of key developments in the cryptocurrency exchange market.

As with previous reviews, it covers exchange rankings by volume; country analysis and predominant fee type model; derivatives and institutional products; fiat, bitcoin and stablecoin volumes. It is also focused on how volumes have developed historically for the top trans-fee mining and decentralised exchanges.

Charles Hayter, CEO and Founder of CryptoCompare, said:

“We are dedicated to bringing real-time, high quality, reliable data to the cryptocurrency markets. As the industry matures, we look forward to spurring adoption of digital assets by providing the datasets required to power investment decisions and increase confidence in the marketplace.”

Key highlights:

• Top crypto-to-crypto exchanges: Monthly volumes increased by 57%. Fcoin topped the rankings at USD 37.1bn (up 300%), followed by OKEx and ZB at USD 35.1bn (up 12.4%) and USD 32.4bn (up 18.8%) respectively.
• Top fiat-to-crypto exchanges:  Monthly volumes increased by 85%. Bithumb was the top exchange at USD 17bn, despite a 47% drop in volumes, followed by Upbit and Bitfinex at USD 8.7bn (up 20%) and USD 6.7bn (up 114%) respectively. Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp and Coinsbit also enjoyed a surge in volumes in April, while Liquid experienced a decrease.
• Decentralised exchanges: While Ethermium once again attracted the greatest volumes at USD 194m, these were down 42%. WavesDEX was at USD 32.5m (up 3.5%) followed by IDEX at USD 31.4m (up 15.9%). DEXs represent only 0.1% of the global spot market.
• Transaction fee mining exchanges: There was a sharp increase in TFM volumes, led by FCoin at USD 37.1bn (up 300%), followed by CoinBene at USD 27bn (up 51.5%) and ZBG at USD 16bn (up 37.2%).
• Crypto derivatives: bitFlyer Lighting (XBT-JPY perpetual futures) saw the highest daily average volumes at USD 1.6bn, followed by BitMEX (XBT-USD perpetual futures) at USD 1.1bn and OKEx Futures at USD 1.1bn (several futures products).  In comparison, regulated futures exchanges represented a very small proportion of volumes with CME trading a daily average of USD 0.3bn and CryptoFacilities trading USD 36.9m.
• Institutional bitcoin derivatives: CME continues to dominate with average daily volumes of USD 256m (up 263%), followed by Grayscale’s bitcoin trust product (GBTC) at USD 29.7m (up 239%). Despite having chosen to cease listing additional bitcoin futures products, CBOE’s bitcoin futures traded a daily average of USD 9.9m (up 109%).
• Crypto-to-crypto vs fiat-to-crypto:  Once again, April saw a significant increase in volumes across exchanges offering only crypto pairs with USD 396bn traded (up 49%).  Crypto-to-crypto volumes represented 84.5% of total spot volume in April. Trading on exchanges also offering fiat pairs increased to USD 72bn (up 25%).
• Bitcoin-to-fiat: The USD accounted for 60% of all bitcoin trading into fiat, at BTC 1.6m (up 74.7%). BTC-JPY volumes continued to decrease, coming in at BTC 0.3m (down 40%), accounting for only 10% of all bitcoin to fiat trading (vs 24% in March). BTC-KRW volumes continued to increase, accounting for BTC 0.3m (up 17.6%).
• Bitcoin-to-stablecoin : BTC-USDT trading represented 78.9% of total volume (across fiat or stablecoin), at BTC 10.3m (up 15%). The BTC-USDT pair accounts for 97.9% of bitcoin-to-stablecoin trading, followed by PAX, USDC and TUSD.
• Predominant fee type :  Exchanges that charge taker fees traded USD 352bn (up 30%), representing 75.1% of total volume. Those charging transaction fee mining traded USD 115bn (up 124%), accounting for 24.6%.

The April Exchange Review report can be found here »

Contact
Teresa Chick
tchick@cryptocompare.com
Tel: 07747 468486

About CryptoCompare
CryptoCompare is the leading provider of cryptocurrency data and indices. Institutional and retail investors rely on the company for real-time, high quality data spanning 5,800+ coins and 270,000+ currency pairs globally.

By aggregating and analysing tick data from globally recognised exchanges and seamlessly integrating multiple datasets, CryptoCompare provides a comprehensive, granular overview of the market across cryptocurrency trade data, order book data, historical data, social data and blockchain data.

CryptoCompare is at the forefront of industry efforts to provide definitive datasets that can be relied on to make investment decisions. The company adheres to rigorous standards to safeguard data integrity and promote consistency and confidence in the market. For more information, please visit https://www.cryptocompare.com.

Notes to editors:

Data methodology: CryptoCompare’s Monthly Exchange Review evaluates the consistency and quality of exchange data, which is incorporated into CryptoCompare’s real-time Aggregate Index Methodology (the CCCAGG), used to calculate the best price estimate of cryptocurrency pairs traded across global exchanges. It aggregates transactional data from more than 150 exchanges using a 24-hour volume weighted average for every cryptocurrency pair. Constituent CCCAGG exchanges are reviewed and amended each month to ensure the most representative and reliable market data is used in CCCAGG pair pricing calculations.

Assessing exchange data: CryptoCompare assesses exchanges on the basis of spot 24-hour volume and pricing data. The current process operates as follows: for each exchange, the 24-hour volume and price of every live trading pair is recorded. Each pair volume is compared to the total market volume for that specific pair and assigned a market share ranking. Pricing for each pair is then compared to that of the CCCAGG pair, and a percentage price difference is calculated. Finally, a 24-hour volume weighted % price difference per pair is calculated to produce a figure to determine how close the overall exchange pricing differences are to those of the CCCAGG.

As a general guideline, CryptoCompare assumes that exchanges with an overall percentage pricing difference of under 10% are within acceptable boundaries. The reason for pricing differences across exchanges may be related to several factors including exchange fees, jurisdiction and tax considerations. It remains the first indicator of acceptability within the CCCAGG exchange list.