Introducing Spot & Options Trading Dashboards on AmberLens

After the successful launch of AmberLens, Amberdata’s institutional market intelligence platform, we are excited to expand our Bitcoin and Ethereum market indicator coverage to Spot Trading. Split between exchange overviews, USD & stablecoin overviews, and frequently traded token overviews, these insightful spot trading metrics give researchers, analysts, and traders a comprehensive overview of the ongoing and historical market trends.

Exchange Overview

Trading Volumes

Spot trading through centralized exchanges (CEXs) is one of the foundations of the digital assets industry allowing individuals and institutions to convert fiat dollars (such as USD) into digital assets (such as BTC and ETH). Centralized exchanges also provide opportunities for traders to swap digital assets, allowing them to invest, onboard into various crypto ecosystems, and gain financial exposure to entirely new asset classes.

Centralized Exchange (CEX) trading volume in USD

At the highest level, centralized exchange trading volume – conversions of fiat or crypto – has been slowing from Q1 2024 bull runs. However, daily trading volume routinely crosses $30 billion (USD) across centralized exchanges.

Centralized Exchange (CEX) trading volume market share

A majority of that volume is consistently traded on Binance. Binance has been the leading CEX trading volume for several years now and boasts high liquidity across a large number of trading pairs. Tracking exchange market share provides a great amount of insight into trading preferences, especially considering the lack of USD payment rails on the exchange.

USD & USD Stablecoin to Other Pair Trading Volumes

Centralized Exchange (CEX) trading volume for USD, USDT, USDC, and other trading pairs

As a means to on-ramp fiat currencies to digital assets, no fiat currency is as strong as USD.  Despite this, USDT is used with far more volume on centralized exchanges than the fiat currency, with USDC volume trailing far behind.

Percentage of trading volume across USD, USDT, USDC, and other trading pairs on Centralized Exchanges (CEX)

Over time, this trend has been fairly stable with USDT taking considerable volumes. The main contributor to this is Binance and other centralized exchanges which do not have support for any USD pairs. Along with Binance’s significant overall market share, USDT trading pairs far outnumber USDC pairs on the exchange.

USD & Stablecoin Overview

Focusing further on USD and USD stablecoin trading pairs, we can look closely at what pairs make up the majority of trading volume and which CEXes maintain market dominance.

USD Trading Pairs

Centralized Exchange (CEX) trading volume with USD trading pairs

USD trading spiked in March as waves of new money entered the market. The emergence of several hit memecoins inspired investors to flow into the ecosystem, along with Hong Kong ETF launches, strong growth in the US Bitcoin ETFs, and bullish sentiment around the recent Bitcoin halving.

Centralized Exchange (CEX) trading volume by USD trading pairs

Bitcoin dominates daily USD trading as investors find the benefits of the first digital asset as a store of value. In addition, Ordinals and Runes have been making big waves allowing for new opportunities and dimensions to the Bitcoin network beyond its traditional use as a vehicle for efficient remittances. USDT and ETH follow in volume, and SOL has been highly traded with USD during the latest memecoin wave.

Centralized Exchange (CEX) USD pair trading volume by exchange

Of the USD pair supporting centralized exchanges, Coinbase is by far the largest. The US-based exchange often holds ~8% of the overall daily market share of trading volume, but with USD pairs the CEX is closer to 75%. Kraken, another US-based exchange, holds ~15% of daily USD pair trading volume representing roughly $500 million daily.

USDT Trading Pairs

Centralized Exchange (CEX) trading volume with USDT trading pairs

As noted earlier, the USDT trading volume far surpasses the USD pair trading volume. One key reason is that many CEXes (such as Binance) do not currently support USD trading pairs due to a lack of fiat payment rails, and instead rely on stablecoin trading such as USDT for investors who prefer a USD-bound method of exchange.

Centralized Exchange (CEX) trading volume by USDT trading pairs

USDT trading pairs have, similar to USD, been dominated by BTC, ETH, and SOL, but FDUSD’s inclusion is an interesting one. Since the announcement that Binance would no longer support BUSD (Binance’s USD stablecoin), the exchange has switched to supporting FDUSD (First Digital USD, issued by Hong Kong-based First Digital). The stablecoin has quickly become the fourth-largest stablecoin by market capitalization and is almost exclusively traded on Binance.

Centralized Exchange (CEX) USDT pair trading volume by exchange

To little surprise, Binance dominates USDT trading volumes, often capturing ~$20 billion in trading volume a day. Most CEXes now support USDT trading but other notable exchanges include Bybit and Huobi which hold ~15% and 8% market share, respectively.

USDC Trading Pairs

Centralized Exchange (CEX) trading volume with USDC trading pairs

Circle’s USD-backed stablecoin USDC is the second largest USD stablecoin by market cap and often has a daily trading volume of ~$500 million. This stablecoin has a trading volume far lower than USD and USDT trading pairs, however, it’s important to note that some exchanges (i.e., Coinbase) report USDC trading volume under USD so this figure can be somewhat misleading.

Centralized Exchange (CEX) trading volume by USDC trading pairs

Top trading pairs for USDC, unlike USDT and USDC, often have daily ETH trading volumes nearly equal to BTC. Given the stablecoin’s wide-ranging use in applications on Ethereum and other Ethereum Layer 2 networks, it’s no surprise that ETH is a common trading pair.

Centralized Exchange (CEX) USDT pair trading volume by exchange

Of USDC-supporting exchanges, Bybit takes the leading position for centralized exchanges. The Dubai headquartered exchange has held roughly 80% of USDC trading volumes, and Binance (which dominates the much larger pie of USDT) accounts for roughly 12% of trading volume market share.

Frequently Traded Tokens Overview

While stablecoins and USD trading pairs can help researchers and analysts uncover trends on new funds entering the space, looking at some of the most frequently traded tokens can help uncover trends on where value may be moving. This custom-selected list of frequently traded tokens is based on trading volume and includes the current top ten tokens: BTC, ETH, SOL, DOGE, USDC, USDT, BNB, XRP, SHIB, and ADA.

Centralized Exchange (CEX) trading volume with frequently traded token trading pairs

These frequently traded tokens represent ~60% of overall CEX trading volume, regularly making up ~$30 billion in trading volume a day.

Centralized Exchange (CEX) trading volume by frequently traded token trading pairs

Of these tokens, BTC and ETH unsurprisingly take the lion's share of trading volume but trends show several spikes in trading volume for SHIB during the March memecoin rush.

Centralized Exchange (CEX) frequently traded tokens pair trading volume by exchange

Again, Binance takes the largest piece of the trading volume pie having >50% market share on these tokens, while Bybit, Coinbase, and OKX make up a significant share.

Options Dashboards

The crypto options market is both concentrated and fragmented simultaneously. 

There are multiple competing venues, currencies, and individual instruments for traders to choose from, but the market continues to be led and dominated by Deribit, the largest crypto options venue in the world. 

Using our AmberLens dashboards, users can quickly look at the breakdown between various venues. We can see the aggregated options open interest or break down the open interest by the various expiration cycles between the venues. 

More importantly, we can also view the individual instruments with the greatest outstanding open interest between venues. This type of information is very interesting as there are geographic differences between the venues and customer user bases, providing us with interesting insights.

Lastly, aside from open interest, we can view the 24-hour volume for each of the top five active contracts by exchange. This type of information helps us find liquidity concentrations and enthusiasm for different coins, strikes, and put/calls. 

Conclusion

Spot and options trading serves as the foundation for the analysis of digital assets, and AmberLens provides a comprehensive view of the centralized exchange markets. Several institutions and retail users large and small rely on CEXs for their added security benefits and access to highly liquid markets. In addition, onboarding new funds by trading USD for cryptocurrency is an important area to watch as large sums of money can heavily influence the direction of the industry. Watching key tokens, pairs, instruments, and volume with AmberLens is a great way to see the trends of the market and a vital source of alpha.