Crypto Trading Volumes Drop in Q2 to Yearly Lows

Crypto trading volumes have hit yearly lows across quarter two, as market makers scale back on trading, according to data from Kaiko.

Average daily volumes for the second quarter of 2023 were $10 billion for the top 10 tokens (excluding stablecoins), compared to $18 billion average daily volumes in the first quarter of the year.

This comes as regulatory crackdown has heightened in the last month, perhaps prompting traders and market makers to pull back. Last week, Binance and Coinbase, two of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, received lawsuits against them from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In terms of individual token market share of trading volume across Q2, bitcoin has lost around 20 percentage points since its peak at the end of March. Ether outperformed bitcoin, taking a 5 percentage point increase in share of volumes. Binance’s BNB rose from 2% of volumes to over 7% in the last few days amid the Binance regulatory fear.