Cryptocurrency Exchanges: April’2022 Market Overview

April, 2022

Key Takeaways:

• Month-on-month trading volumes on spot cryptocurrency exchanges deteriorated by 7% in April.
• The volume of BTC on the derivative market was cut down by more than 20%. Unlike futures, the volume of Ethereum options went up by 7%.
• Aggregated open interest of Bitcoin and Ethereum futures along with its prices showed a downward trend during April.
• The futures market recorded two large liquidations of more than $400 million.
• Bitcoin and Ethereum prices went down by 18.7% and 21% correspondingly.
• Market capitalization as of April 30, 2022 achieved $1.85 trillion, which is 16% lower compared to the capitalization at the end of March.
• Crusoe Energy Systems, Circle, Framework Ventures and The Sandbox raised more than $400m in venture funding rounds.
• M&A activity: Coinbase is in talks to acquire BtcTurk: Wyre was acquired by Bolt.

Spot Market

According to The Block’s legitimate volume index [14], trading volume on 24 cryptocurrency exchanges varied insignificantly over the last 4 months in comparison with 2021. In April, it achieved $687.85b, which is 7% lower compared to the previous month.

Graph 1. Cryptocurrency Exchange Volume (The Block Legitimate Index) [14]
Note: The Block legitimate volume is a group of 24 exchanges vetted by The Block: Binance, Coinbase, FTX, Kraken, LMAX Digital, Bitfinex, Binance US, Bitstamp, BTSE, Gemini, BitFlyer, Poloniex, Coincheck, Bittrex, Bitbank, Indodax, CEX, OKCoin, itBit, Bitso, Luno, Korbit, Zaif, GOPAX

• Crypto only trading volume on the largest crypto exchange, Binance, in April went down by 5% to $465.3b. However, this result has exceeded the February trading volume by 10%.

Unlike Binance, trading volume on other leading spot cryptocurrency exchanges has gone in the opposite direction.

• Crypto-only exchange volume on OKX (formerly known as OKEx) in April soared by 44% to $109.35b versus March and outperformed February results by 6%.
• Gate.io demonstrated a 17% upside in terms of trading volume, which reached $52.9b in April. It was the highest monthly trading volume over Gate.io’s existence.
• Trading volume on Huobi exchange has grown gradually since February 2022. In April it rose by 17% versus March and reached $54.31b.
• KuCoin trading volume showed 17% upturn in April compared to March. This number corresponds to the December 2021 results.

Graph 2. Crypto-only Exchange Volume [14]
Note: Spot market share of cryptocurrency exchanges with primarily only crypto support

Futures Market

1)Futures Volume

• Total trading volume of Bitcoin futures across leading cryptocurrency exchanges, in dollar terms, reduced by a fifth in April to $1.06t, where all the platforms demonstrated a volume shrink.
• Similar to BTC, futures contracts on Ethereum decreased by 7% in April to $0.61t versus the March results and continued their downward trend since December 2021.

Graph 3. Volume of Bitcoin Futures [14]                                                     Graph 4. Volume of Ethereum Futures [14]

2) Aggregated Open Interest

• Aggregated open interest (OI) of BTC and ETH futures along with its prices had a downward trend in April, and at the end of the month it reached its lowest values of $14.72b and $8.11b for BTC and ETH correspondingly.
• Binance share of the open interest across futures continues to grow and at the end of April it achieved ~30% on BTC futures and ~26% on ETH futures.
• At the end of April, CME, OKX, FTX, Bybit share of open interest on Bitcoin and Ethereum futures were spread almost evenly, about 10-15% per exchange.

Graph 5. Open Interest on BTC Futures [14]                                                  Graph 6. Open Interest on ETH Futures [14]

3) Long/Short ratio

According to data from The Block [14], in April there was strong domination of BTC long positions over short positions in Binance, which indicates bullish investor sentiment.

Graph 7. BTC Long/Short Ratio on Binance [14]

4) Liquidations of all coins

In April, there were predominantly liquidations of long positions, where the highest of over $400m were recorded on April 6 and April 11, when BTC price went down by more than by 5%. The drop is mainly accounted to Binance and OKX.

Graph 8. Liquidations [6]

Options Market

1) Options Volume

• The options market in April has shown similar dynamics to the futures market. The volume of BTC options plunged by 24% and reached $15.8b, which was fueled by the volume drop on Deribit exchange.
• CME derivatives remain reliable metrics for gauging “institutional” interest in the digital assets. Month-on-month, the CME volume of Bitcoin options in April crashed down by 71% to $246.7m, the lowest seen since July 2021.
• The volume of ETH options, unlike Bitcoin options, increased by 7% and totalled $12.3b.

Graph 9. Volume of BTC options [14]                                                       Graph 10. Volume of ETH options [14]

2) Aggregated Open Interest (OI)

• As of 30 April 2022, aggregated open interest (OI) across BTC and ETH options was $6.73b and $4.99b correspondingly. During the month, total OI across Bitcoin and Ethereum options varied slightly.
• Deribit continues to be an unrivaled leader on the options market. The exchange has ~$6.7 billion of BTC open interest as of the end of April, which comprises ~90% of total OI.
• Open interest of CME Bitcoin options is $365m as of April 30, 2022, which is ~5% of the total open interest.

Graph 11. Open Interest of BTC options [14]                                             Graph 12. Open Interest of ETH options [14]

Dynamics of Leading Assets

By the April results, Bitcoin price went up by 18.7%, and at the end of the month it reached $37.65k.
The price of the second largest cryptocurrency Ethereum plunged by 21% and reached $2.73k.

Graph 13. BTC price [14]                                                                                               Graph 14. ETH price [14]

Market Capitalization

Total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market as of April 30, 2022 was $1.85 trillion, which is 16% lower compared to the capitalization of the end of March.

Graph 15. Total Market Capitalization [14]

Large Venture Rounds

M&A Deals

Read more:

Cryptocurrency Exchanges: Mar’22 Market Overview

World Crypto Regulatory News: April 2022

References:

1. 1. Betz, B. “Framework Ventures Launches $400M Fund to Back Web 3 Gaming, DeFi”. CoinDesk, April 19, 2022
2. Crawley, J. “Huobi, Kucoin, Others Lead $250M Toncoin Ecosystem Fund”. СoinDesk, April 11, 2022
3. Crawley, J. “Robinhood Agrees to Acquire UK Crypto Platform Ziglu”. CoinDesk, April 19, 2022
4. “Crypto payments firm Wyre acquired by Bolt for $1.5 billion”. Ledger Insights, April 7, 2022.
5. Gkritsi, E. “Coinbase in Talks to Acquire BtcTurk for About $3.2B: Report”. CoinDesk, April 22, 2022
6. “Futures Markets Global Charts”. Coinalyze, May 5, 2022.
7. Harley-McKeown, L. “The Sandbox gears up to raise $400 million at a $4 billion valuation: report”. The Block Crypto, April 19, 2022
8. Metinko, C. “Crypto Exchange Binance.US Raises $200M-Plus ‘Seed’ Round At $4.5B”. Crunchbase, April 6, 2022
9. Moura, C. “Flare gas-powered Bitcoin miner Crusoe Energy Systems raises $505 million”. The Block Crypto, April 21, 2022
10. Seward, Z. “Circle Raises $400M as BlackRock Explores USDC”. CoinDesk, April 12, 2022.
11. Shumba, C. “OneFootball Closes $300M Funding Round Led by Liberty City Ventures”. CoinDesk, April 28, 2022
12. Tan, G., Kharif, O. “Crypto Startup Ava Labs Seeks Funds at $5 Billion Valuation”. Bloomberg, April 14, 2022
13. Tan, E. “OpenSea Eyes ‘Pro Experience’ With Acquisition of NFT Aggregator Gem”. CoinDesk, April 25, 2022
14. The Block Crypto, May 5, 2021