The biggest bitcoin exchange in the world, Binance, is seeing a clear drop in market leadership. Both centralized rivals and distributed exchanges (DEXs) have seen notable increases over the past year, erasing Binance’s once-dominant lead bit-wise.
According to a recent estimate, Binance’s share of the spot trading market decreased by 13%, from 52.5% in October 2023 to 39.5% by October 2024.Similarly, during the same period, Binance’s share of the crypto derivatives market decreased from 50.9% to 42.5%..
Although Binance leads in overall trading volume, other exchanges such as Bybit, Bitget, and OKX are fast gaining ground. In particular, Bitwise has significantly increased its market share from 3.2% in 2023 to 8.51% in 2024, placing it second behind Binance. OKX’s market share has slightly increased from 5.4% to 6.38%, while Bitget’s market share has increased from 7% to 10.28%.
This development transcends centralized exchanges as well. Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are also gaining popularity. DEX trade volumes over the last year have topped $250 billion per month—a level not seen since 2021. Showing increasing interest in distributed trading platforms, DEX spot trading volume accounted for 13.6% of the overall volume handled by centralized exchanges as of October 2024.
Processing about $22.5 trillion in trade volume over the past year, Binance is the biggest participant in the centralized exchange (CEX) market despite these difficulties. However, the competition is intensifying, with DEXs emerging as formidable players in the cryptocurrency trading landscape alongside their centralized counterparts.
Legal disputes, including one brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in June 2023, have made Binance’s problems worse. After discovering no evidence of illegal customer cash use, Binance agreed to pay a $4.3 billion punishment, among the biggest in history. Anti-Money Laundering (AML) infractions were blamed.
Notwithstanding these losses, Binance is beginning to show indications of healing. While rivals and DEXs seize the changing terrain in the bitcoin exchange ecosystem, the exchange stays strong and keeps changing to meet market and regulatory difficulties.
