2021 Q1 Cryptocurrency Spot Trading Research Report

Executive Summary

• In 2021 Q1, the total spot trading volume of crypto assets reached a quarterly high of $14 trillion, surpassing the full-year trading volume in 2019, equivalent to 66.4% of the full-year trading volume in 2020 ($21.08 trillion), accounting for about 46.06% of the entire market.

• At the beginning of Q1, the market value of the crypto asset market was about $772.5 billion, which was equivalent to the total market value of Singapore stock market. By the end of March, the market value of the crypto asset market had risen to $1.86 trillion, surpassing the total market value of the Australian stock market.

• Compared with Bitcoin, the impact of the price of Ethereum on the market value of crypto assets is about four times that of Bitcoin, fully certifying the growth of the DeFi ecosystem. The total value locked of DeFi has the most significant impact on the price of Ethereum in Q1.

• The linkage between Ethereum and Bitcoin remained relatively close in Q1. Due to the core role of Ethereum in DeFi, smart contracts are very obvious for Ethereum’s long position.

• The token UNI of Uniswap is one of the top ten non-mainstream tokens with the highest market value increase in 2021 Q1, and BNB is the platform currency with the best overall performance.

• Binance is also the only exchange with a trillion-level trading volume in spot this quarter. There are more than 30 exchanges with a quarterly turnover exceeding $100 billion in the entire market, and these exchanges collectively account for over 45.77% of the market.

• Compliance exchanges have relatively low trading volume, but their user activity is significantly higher than the market average.

• KuCoin, ZT, FTX, etc. have achieved certain share growth, and Binance exchanges have become increasingly prominent in the spot market.

• Despite being challenged by such exchanges as Sushiswap and Curve, Uniswap V2 still holds the first position in DEX by advantage of its first-mover; Pancake Swap's market share has risen to the second place in the DEX market at the end of the quarter. The rapid development of BSC in Q1 and the support of Binance for high-quality on-chain DeFi projects are important influence factors.

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