OKEx seems to be fighting back, despite Binance recording the highest crypto derivatives volume in September.
The crypto market faced with extremely tumultuous financial conditions at the start of October. It was thanks to the recent filings against BitMEX. Those filings saw the company’s top brass indicated by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission on several charges. Cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin was hacked to the tune of over $275 million on Sept. 26, just a few days before the BitMEX scandal came to light.
Also, the crypto derivatives market witnessed a significant development in the form of Binance overtaking Huobi. Moreover, OKEx became the largest crypto derivatives exchange by volume for September. Thus, for the month, the platform recorded a total trade volume of $164.8 billion.
United Kingdom-based crypto analytics firm CryptoCompare released the data. It took into consideration the trading volume of the exchanges mentioned above. So, it found that Binance drew in a total of eight billion more in trade volume than its closest competitor Huobi. Huobi raked in $156.3 billion amid the same period. Meanwhile, OKEx drew in around $155.7 billion.
During July and August, OKEx and Binance demonstrated relatively similar derivatives volumes. However, Huobi had quite a margin on both its closest rivals during the same time window. That poses a question of how Binance could make such strides in just one month, overtaking OKEx and Huobi so quickly.
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Jay Hao is the CEO of OKEx. He told Cointelegraph that Binance held a $1.6 million trading competition on its futures exchange to mark its one anniversary in September. It can be a cause of the sudden rapid spike in volume. Also, it explains why the OI is so low compared to OKEx. Traders did not open long positions. Nevertheless, they were competing for their share of the prize pool.
One key driver that helped spur the recent market performance was user feedback. It is according to a Binance spokesperson. It is mostly regarding the less-than-ideal trading experiences that many customers had previously faced on other derivatives exchanges.
Another event that might have bolstered market confidence was Black Thursday. Black Thursday was on March twelve. The day greatly affected both crypto and traditional markets. Meanwhile, many other derivatives exchanges encountered significant outages. Nevertheless, Binance offered uninterrupted service to its customers. Thus, they potentially cemented confidence in the platform.
Furthermore, the number of users moved from Bitcoin to Defi-based derivatives and various altcoins.
