Binance’s Bitcoin (BTC) Trading Dominance Dives
Another week, another crypto-centric analytics report from Diar, a leading research unit in the nascent cryptocurrency ecosystem. In the startup’s most recent installment, released on Monday, Diar drew attention to the ever-changing role that Bitcoin (BTC) and that exchanges that support it have played in the cryptocurrency market at large. Interestingly, per data compiled by Diar, sourced from this industry’s foremost exchanges, Binance’s nearly-unquestioned hegemony over crypto may be at risk.
We've published our latest issue for your read:
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• #Bitcoin Trading Volume Share Evening on Token Exchangeshttps://t.co/k8Cq0lCkTb— Diar (@DiarNewsletter) December 10, 2018
According to Diar, “Bitcoin trading volumes have taken a hit across major token exchanges over the course of 2018.” The research team, doing their best to portray this happenstance, noted that while Binance continues to dominate the crypto trading scene, its in-house BTC/USD(T) pair only accounts for 32% of the entire market’s total BTC/USDT volume. While this may seem like a hefty figure in and of itself, considering that this statistic for Binance peaked at 47% in June, the unprecedented growth of interest in altcoins through Binance may be worrying to Bitcoin’s diehard maximalists.
Binance isn’t alone in its inability to attract active Bitcoin traders. Hong Kong-based Bitfinex saw its BTC/USD market undergo an even worse popularity decline, with the pair now only amounting for 27% of the market’s aggregate BTC/USD volume, compared to 51% at the turn of 2017. This can likely be attributed to the platform’s uncanny ability to generate immense controversy in recent months, as seen by the Tether debacle and banking qualms.
Interestingly, “State-side” platforms, exchanges based in America, have “suffered” the largest losses in BTC/USD in recent months, with Bittrex and Polniex now only accounting for 2.7% of Bitcoin trading volumes.
There’s been one notable outlier in this case of ‘bear market blues’, with OkEX, widely lauded as Binance’s primary competitor, seeing its primary BTC market post a 6x market share gain since January.
Report: Crypto Market To Consist Of 66% Bitcoin in 2019
Although Diar’s report didn’t paint a positive picture for the short to mid-term prospects for Bitcoin’s hegemony over the cryptosphere, as it seems that traders are looking to altcoins yet again, a number of analysts from A.T. Kearney expect for BTC to continue to rule over altcoins with an iron fist, no holds barred.
Per reports from Forbes contributor Panos Mourdoukoutas, who has taken a liking to Bitcoin, A.T. Kearney, a multinational management consulting firm, reportedly issued a report specifically on Bitcoin’s market dominance statistic, which is currently situated at 55%. The corporation noted that it expects for the statistic to “nearly” reach two-thirds of the aggregate capitalization of cryptocurrencies. Citing reasons for this ~66% target, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility, the American firm purportedly stated that altcoins have “lost their luster” due to growing risk aversion tactics enlisted by retail investors.
Investors’ growing penchant for liquidating their altcoin positions for Bitcoin can potentially be chalked up to the U.S. SEC’s renewed crackdown on ICO-funded tokens. Just recently, the American financial regulator fined AirFox and Paragon, two lesser-known ICOs, in a precedent-setting case, instilling fear throughout the crypto investor base as a whole. As is common practice, if there aren’t enough rewards to justify the risk, investors won’t allocate capital to the asset class in question. This case with altcoins, a majority of which were parented by ICOs, is undoubtedly no different.
However, A.T. Kearney says this isn’t exactly the case, with the firm drawing attention to the ever-growing complexity of the nascent altcoin subset. Courtney Rickert McCaffrey at A.T. Kearney wrote:
“Our prediction is that Bitcoin will regain its dominance is supported by the ever-growing complexity among altcoins, most recently demonstrated by the ‘hash war’ that occurred in the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem.”
Although this isn’t a well-documented issue, a number of crypto-centric consumers took to Twitter during Bitcoin Cash’s hard fork to express how confusing the whole fracas was. This, of course, only legitimizes the aforementioned firm’s report, albeit only be a smidgen.
Title Image Courtesy of Andre Francois Via Unsplash
