Attention to Global Bitcoin Trade

The new report has been announced and according to the report, although the cryptocurrency markets remain small compared to traditional markets, they will be able to exceed the current traditional markets in the next 5 years. Coin Metrics, a Boston-based cryptocurrency data and infrastructure initiative, today provided detailed information on the details of Bitcoin's trade volumes. Evaluating trade volumes is not a straightforward process. Different calculation methodologies can lead to different results. The report offers a unique insight into where most of the Bitcoin trade is located, providing a number of different perspectives.

Bitcoin Trading in the Spot Market

According to the report, Bitcoin's daily trading volume is approximately $ 0.5 billion in the US spot markets when looking at the markets that trade in US dollars. Even though there are many crypto exchanges operating in the US, according to Coin Metrics' data, it is known that the majority of Bitcoin trading takes place on exchanges such as Coinbase, Bitstamp, Bitfinex and Kraken, which are only four major platforms.

Comparing Trade Volume Types

When price markets around the world are taken into account, Bitcoin's trading volume during the day adds an additional $0.7 billion, reaching a total of $1.2 billion.

Coin Metrics noted that the Japanese Yen, Euro, Korean Won and British Pound are the most common price currencies used for Bitcoin trading after the US Dollar.

Looking at the stablecoin markets

Moreover, if stablecoins are added to these figures, price currencies account for only a third of Bitcoin's trading volume. ‘Including markets quoted within stablecoins, it significantly increases the daily trading volume to $3.5 billion due to Tether, a stablecoin operating in a regulatory grey zone,’ the report said.

Other stablecoins have insignificant volumes compared to Tether.

Coin Metrics suggested that investors should carefully decide whether the high liquidity and access to trading activity is worth all the risk associated with this stablecoin. Experts also noted that regulator-compliant stablecoins such as USD Coin, Paxos Standard or TruedUSD ‘have insignificant volumes compared to Tether’.

Perpetual Futures Contracts

Bitcoin derivatives markets are several times larger than all spot markets combined. For example, Binance and Huobi alone are responsible for Bitcoin daily trading volumes of approximately $2.6 billion and $2.5 billion, respectively.

As a result, Bitcoin's global volume is only a fraction of traditional markets. ‘With a daily trading volume of only $4.1 billion, Bitcoin's spot markets are still very small compared to the US equity markets, US bond markets and global currency markets,’ Coin Metrics emphasises.

For example, the US stock and bond markets have volumes of $ 446 billion and $ 893 billion, respectively, while the daily volumes of global foreign exchange markets reach $ 1,987 billion. Analysts say that Bitcoin is still a very broad asset class. Taking into account Bitcoin's historical growth rates, they say the cryptocurrency could exceed the daily volume of all US stocks in less than four years and surpass bond markets in less than five years.