Crypto exchange race: How the balance of power shifted over the past year

​Over the past year, the crypto exchange market has become more competitive. Major platforms still dominate, but second-tier exchanges are already breathing down their necks. Traders are increasingly using futures, while spot trading is gradually moving to the background. What other changes have taken place during this time, and which platforms have managed to succeed?

Who sets the pace of the market

According to a new CryptoQuant report, the overall ranking of crypto exchanges in 2025 was led by MEXC, Binance, and Bybit. Analysts evaluated the platforms across several parameters at once: trading volumes, turnover growth, reserve size, Proof-of-Reserves transparency, the balance between spot and derivatives, and the dynamics of reserves.

Loading...

The tweet was deleted by the author.

But we saved everything 🙂.

MEXC took first place thanks to the rapid growth of its trading activity. The platform’s total trading volume reached $10.4 trillion, which is $4.9 trillion more than a year earlier. Perpetual futures made the main contribution to this growth — derivatives account for the majority of activity on the exchange.

Binance ranked second, but in terms of scale it remains the largest platform in the world. In 2025, the exchange’s total trading volume reached $32.4 trillion, increasing by $4.2 trillion over the year. These high figures are driven by both spot trading and derivatives, as well as large reserves held on the platform.

Third place went to Bybit. The exchange maintains strong positions in the derivatives market and demonstrates a high level of transparency. At the same time, its trading volume in perpetual contracts exceeded $10 trillion, making the platform one of the key centers for leveraged trading.

Derivatives take center stage

The growth of derivatives trading largely explains why these exchanges ended up among the leaders. In 2025, this segment developed rapidly and became the main source of turnover on most major platforms. On many exchanges, 70–90% of all transactions now come from perpetual futures, while spot trading plays a secondary role.

Binance remains the largest platform for derivatives trading. The total volume of perpetual contracts traded on the exchange reached about $25 trillion, which is 20% more than a year earlier. For comparison, OKX ranks second with a volume of about $11 trillion, while Bybit holds third place with roughly $10 trillion.

“Futures have effectively become the center of the crypto market. They make it easier to trade with leverage, open positions quickly, and work with short-term price movements. So it’s not surprising that derivatives platforms are showing the highest turnover today,” notes Traders Union crypto trader Viktoras Karapetyants.

At the same time, the fastest growth is often seen among smaller platforms. For example, on the Gate exchange, perpetual futures trading volume increased by about 468% over the year. On Coinbase International, the figure rose by around 329%, while on MEXC it grew by approximately 90%. In other words, newer players are gradually taking part of the trading volumes from long-time market leaders.

Spot trading is still in trend

Although derivatives are pushing the market forward, spot trading has not disappeared — it now resembles more of a “base layer” supporting part of the liquidity. The leader here remains the same: Binance, with $7 trillion in spot trading volume in 2025 — several times higher than that of its closest competitors.

Next comes a tight group but with a significant gap: Bybit with about $1.5 trillion in spot volume, and Crypto.com with about $1.3 trillion.

Against this backdrop, the most noticeable shift is the growth of mid-tier exchanges. MEXC increased its spot volume by about 90% and moved from 9th to 4th place in the spot ranking.

If we look not only at size but also at dynamics, spot liquidity is gradually spreading across the market. Over the year, spot volumes increased by 54% on HTX, 51% on KuCoin, 50% on Bitget, and 45% on Bullish.

Transparency becomes a new argument

However, trading volumes are no longer the only factor traders consider. After the crises of recent years, increasing attention is being paid to how willing exchanges are to disclose their reserves and prove their solvency.

By this metric, KuCoin came out ahead. The exchange scored 96.7 out of 100 on the Proof-of-Reserves transparency index. The platform publishes its wallet addresses, releases monthly Merkle-tree-based reports, and confirms the data through third-party auditing firms.

High scores were also received by Bybit — about 93.2 points — while Kraken entered the A category thanks to publicly available wallet data and reserve audits.

At the same time, the largest exchanges by trading volume show more modest results: Binance’s transparency index stands at 75.2 points, while Coinbase scores about 44.3 due to the lack of full wallet address disclosure and the inability to independently verify user balances.

“After the FTX story, many traders started paying closer attention to exchange reserves. Today, it’s no longer enough to simply have large volumes — users want to understand where their funds are stored and whether their existence can be verified,” emphasizes Viktoras Karapetyants.

Favorite countries for exchanges

It is also worth noting that competition is increasingly focused not only on trading volumes but also on specific countries and currencies. Outside the dollar market, many exchanges have developed strong regional positions, and in some cases there is almost no competition there.

For example, in South Korea, nearly all trading volume in pairs with the Korean won is concentrated on local platforms Upbit and Bithumb. Meanwhile, in pairs with the Turkish lira (TRY), Japanese yen (JPY), and Polish zloty (PLN), Binance dominates and captures most of the trading activity.

In Europe, the situation is more competitive. Trading in euros (EUR) is distributed across several exchanges — primarily Kraken and Binance, but noticeable volumes are also present on Coinbase, MEXC, and OKX.

In pairs with the British pound (GBP), the market is effectively shared by Kraken and Coinbase. Meanwhile, in currencies such as the Swiss franc (CHF) and the Canadian dollar (CAD), Kraken also holds leading positions.

Competition reaches a new level

As we can see, the crypto exchange market is becoming more diverse. The largest platforms still control most of the turnover, but mid-tier players are increasingly showing growth, actively developing their derivatives segments.

At the same time, liquidity is gradually spreading across a larger number of platforms, and the competition for users is no longer limited to one or two global leaders.

Meanwhile, the criteria traders use when choosing an exchange are also changing. Today, not only trading volumes matter, but also reserve transparency, infrastructure reliability, and positions in regional markets.

As a result, competition among crypto exchanges is becoming more complex: platforms are competing on multiple fronts at once — from derivatives and spot trading to user trust and geographic presence.