CryptoCompare, the leading provider of cryptocurrency data and indices, today released its April 2019 Exchange Review, offering investors, analysts and regulators analysis of key developments in the cryptocurrency exchange market.  

Charles Hayter, CEO and Founder of CryptoCompare, said: “We are dedicated to bringing real-time, high quality, reliable data to the cryptocurrency markets. As the industry matures, we look forward to spurring adoption of digital assets by providing the datasets required to power investment decisions and increase confidence in the marketplace.”

Key highlights: 

• Top crypto-to-crypto exchanges: Monthly volumes increased by 57%. Fcoin topped the rankings at USD 37.1bn (up 300%), followed by OKEx and ZB at USD 35.1bn (up 12.4%) and USD 32.4bn (up 18.8%) respectively.  
• Top fiat-to-crypto exchanges:  Monthly volumes increased by 85%. Bithumb was the top exchange at USD 17bn, despite a 47% drop in volumes, followed by Upbit and Bitfinex at USD 8.7bn (up 20%) and USD 6.7bn (up 114%) respectively. Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp and Coinsbit also enjoyed a surge in volumes in April, while Liquid experienced a decrease. 
• Decentralised exchanges: While Ethermium once again attracted the greatest volumes at USD 194m, these were down 42%. WavesDEX was at USD 32.5m (up 3.5%) followed by IDEX at USD 31.4m (up 15.9%). DEXs represent only 0.1% of the global spot market.
• Transaction fee mining exchanges: There was a sharp increase in TFM volumes, led by FCoin at USD 37.1bn (up 300%), followed by CoinBene at USD 27bn (up 51.5%) and ZBG at USD 16bn (up 37.2%).
• Crypto derivatives: bitFlyer Lighting (XBT-JPY perpetual futures) saw the highest daily average volumes at USD 1.6bn, followed by BitMEX (XBT-USD perpetual futures) at USD 1.1bn and OKEx Futures at USD 1.1bn (several futures products). In comparison, regulated futures exchanges represented a very small proportion of volumes with CME trading a daily average of USD 0.3bn and CryptoFacilities trading USD 36.9m.
• Institutional bitcoin derivatives: CME continues to dominate with average daily volumes of USD 256m (up 263%), followed by Grayscale’s bitcoin trust product (GBTC) at USD 29.7m (up 239%). Despite having chosen to cease listing additional bitcoin futures products, CBOE’s bitcoin futures traded a daily average of USD 9.9m (up 109%). 
• Crypto-to-crypto vs fiat-to-crypto:  Once again, April saw a significant increase in volumes across exchanges offering only crypto pairs with USD 396bn traded (up 49%). Crypto-to-crypto volumes represented 84.5% of total spot volume in April. Trading on exchanges also offering fiat pairs increased to USD 72bn (up 25%). 
• Bitcoin-to-fiat: The USD accounted for 60% of all bitcoin trading into fiat, at BTC 1.6m (up 74.7%). BTC-JPY volumes continued to decrease, coming in at BTC 0.3m (down 40%), accounting for only 10% of all bitcoin to fiat trading (vs 24% in March). BTC-KRW volumes continued to increase, accounting for BTC 0.3m (up 17.6%).
• Bitcoin-to-stablecoin : BTC-USDT trading represented 78.9% of total volume (across fiat or stablecoin), at BTC 10.3m (up 15%). The BTC-USDT pair accounts for 97.9% of bitcoin-to-stablecoin trading, followed by PAX, USDC and TUSD. 
• Predominant fee type :  Exchanges that charge taker fees traded USD 352bn (up 30%), representing 75.1% of total volume. Those charging transaction fee mining traded USD 115bn (up 124%), accounting for 24.6%.