Crypto Trading Insights May 2024: Market Surges $420B as BitGet overtakes Binance

Cryptocurrency market grew 20% in May 2024, adding over $420 billion to its market capitalization. While Binance struggled amid bearish headwinds from ex-CEO Changpeng Zhao’s conviction, competing crypto exchanges like Bitget have gained significant traction in terms of trading volumes.

Crypto Market At a Glance

According to a recent CCData Insight on top exchanges, the industry saw a negative reversal in the combined volume of spot and derivatives trading on centralized exchanges in April.

This combined metric comes in at $6.5 trillion, down by 43.8%. Bearish triggers that sparked the drop in the market include negative net flow from spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States and geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East.

After a historic March, where Bitcoin printed an all-time high of $73,750.07, April served as a cooling period, before the markets gained traction again in May 2024. 

As seen in the chart above, the global crypto market cap grew from $2.041 trillion on May 1, to hit $2.4 trillion at the close of the month, adding over $420 billion in valuation.

However, behind the scenes, monthly spot trading volumes shrunk by 32.6% to $2.01 trillion. Additionally, derivatives volume slumped by 47.6% to $4.57 trillion, the seventh consecutive drop in this regard.

Binance Falls Behind as BitGet Gains Traction

Amidst these declines, some exchanges, like Binance, directly trailed the trend and recorded a drop in their market shares. Specifically, Binance’s spot trading volume plunged by 39.2% to $679 million, the first drop since September 2023. This drop comes amid the sentencing of its founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao to four months in prison.

While Binance suffered a slippage, Bitget rode against the bearish tides. The exchange recorded a massive uptick in both spot and derivatives volume, extending its overall market share.

March saw the highest spot trading volume thus far this year, followed by April. 

Per individual performance in April, Bitget recorded $81.2 billion in spot exchange volume for the month. While Bitget saw a 10.3% slip in this metric, Coinbase slumped 43.4% to $89.1 billion. In this regard, Bitget significantly outshone WhiteBIT, HTX, Bybit, KuCoin, Upbit, and Binance in monthly spot volume changes.

On a Year-to-Date basis, Bitget took the lead in the market with the largest gains in spot markets. Within this period, the exchange’s market share rose by 2.01% to 38%. Surprisingly, Bitget’s YTD market share surpassed that of Binance at 33.8% as Upbit and OKX saw negative slips to 3.73% and 1.54% respectively.

Bitget recorded this growth in part as it paid attention to core users’ needs amid the dynamic growth in the market. The firm prioritized listing innovative projects with a strong team and community backing. This made it easy to gain the trust of users, culminating in an impressive spot trading volume uptick.

Derivatives Trading Data: Mixed Exchange Growth

Many centralized exchanges saw a better leaning in the derivatives market category. Of the $4.58 trillion recorded in the centralized exchange’s derivatives volume for April, Bitget and OKX saw the highest increases in market share overall.

While OKX recorded $1.04 trillion, Bitget recorded a total of $652 billion. This places it ahead of rivals like Kraken and HTX with $29.3 billion and $22.8 billion respectively.

Per the change in derivatives market share for April, Bitget took the decisive lead, according to the CCData report. Bitget’s share increased by 1.39% to 14.3%. Though Binance is still the largest derivatives exchange, its market share dominance dropped by 2.22% to 44.4%.

The market dynamics in April extended to the Open Interest (OI) on Derivatives Exchanges. The OI on these platforms dropped by 24.8% to $45.4 billion for the month.

Bitget also suffered a drop in this metric with the interest dropping by 27.8% to $5.94 billion. Despite this fall, Bitget still fares better compared to Binance which saw a 34.4% slump to $16 billion.

Per the Bitcoin Funding Rates, a measure of bullish sentiment by market participants, Bitget also maintained a major lead over Binance. The exchange’s BTC Funding Rate came in at 6.23% against Binance’s 3.295%.

Bottom Line

Per the CCData insight, the market underperformed in April. Besides the recorded slump in spot and derivatives volume, the CME volume also dropped 19.8% to $124 billion. This is the first major plunge since around November. Correspondingly, the monthly Bitcoin Futures on CEXs fell 17.7% to $101 billion.

However, with the introduction of the Ethereum ETFs, this decline in CME trading volume could experience a bullish reversal in June 2024

Asides from the much-anticipated Ethereum ETFs official launch, the next US Non-Farm Payrolls data expected on June 7 as well as the Fed Rate announcement slated for June 12 2024 are key macro events to look forward to as the month unfolds.