We all know that Binance is big and the biggest exchange. That is not news. But if one looks closely, it is insane just how big Binance really is.

Market share

The market share (total trading volume) of Binance has continuously grown over the past year in part due to the fall of one of its biggest competitors, FTX. I think this is visualized beautifully in the graph below, where the % market share of Binance is shown in green across the different months of 2022:

Market share; Binance = Green (Source: CoinDesk)

This trend has continues in 2023 as Binance gobble up more of the market share this year.

Spot volume of Bitcoin

If one looks at the Bitcoin volume per exchange (spot, not leverage trading), it becomes apparent that OVER 98% of the spot volume takes place on Binance!! This is a ridiculous number.

24 hour volume per exchange for Bitcoin (Source: Coinanalyze)

The continued dominance of Bitcoin's spot trading volume on Binance across time is shown in the graph below. Since 2018, Binance has basically taken over the market.

Bitcoin % share in spot trading volume (source: JA_Maartun on Twitter)

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Questions for the audience

• How can Binance have such a big market share and how bad is that for us? This goes against the whole principle of decentralization.
• That 98% of the Bitcoin spot volume happens on Binance is absolutely insane. How is that possible?
• Is there anything that can be done to, uh, get more "decentralization" in this space and in the distribution of power across different exchanges?