Trading volumes at Binance have seen a nearly three-fold increase as volatility returns to the crypto markets.
The number one crypto exchange has seen its daily trading volumes rise this week, from a low of $570 million to its current level of $1.5 billion—with a quarter of the trading made by just one pair, Bitcoin against Tether. This comes amidst a booming altcoin market, and steep declines in the price of bitcoin.
While the sudden boom in trading is good news for Binance, it pails into comparison with the exchange's all-time daily trading high of $5.6 billion—when Bitcoin hit $14,000 in mid-June this year.
Since then, daily volume has been in steady decline. With lower spikes of $3 billion a day in July, and then 1.9 billion in August—the exchange's volume fell to its lowest point in early September, before recovering this week.
The trading figures don't include Binance's new Bitcoin futures trading offering, which has seen $200 million a day in trading volumes since its sole Bitcoin vs USD contract went live earlier this week.
That's not a bad start, but it's still well below its main competitor BitMEX—which regularly sees daily trading volumes 10 times that amount on any given day. Huobi and OKEx too, are way out ahead.
Can Binance make up for lost time?