CoinGecko: In Q1, spot trading volume on leading CEXs fell by 16%

What’s new? Analysts at the leading digital asset aggregator CoinGecko have said in a new report that total crypto market capitalization fell by 18,6% in Q1 to end up at $2,8 trillion. While the figure briefly rose to a yearly high of $3,8 trillion shortly before Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 18, a decline followed, which also led to a drop in investor activity, with average daily trading volumes falling by -27,3% quarter-on-quarter to $146 billion.

CoinGecko report

What else is known? Against the backdrop of the general decline, which came mainly from altcoins, bitcoin strengthened its dominance: its share in the total crypto market capitalization rose from 54,5% to 59,1%. Such a high level has not been seen since the beginning of 2021.

Stablecoins also benefited from the market downturn as investors sought stability. USDT from issuer Tether gained market share to 5,2%, while Circle’s USDC regained seventh place in the overall cryptocurrency ranking by capitalization, displacing the oldest meme token Dogecoin.

Ethereum’s market share fell 3,9% to 7,9%, the lowest since the end of 2019. Overall, the leading altcoin performed worst against other major cryptocurrencies during the quarter, losing 45,3% of its value and ending up at $1805, previously only seen in 2023.

Among the major altcoins, only Ripple’s XRP and Binance’s BNB managed to maintain their market share.

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Although BTC hit an all-time high of $106 182 in January, it ended the quarter down 11,8% at $82 514 and lagged behind gold and US Treasuries in terms of yield.

Overall, gold was the strongest performing asset class last quarter with a gain of 18%, while risk assets such as the NASDAQ and SP500 stock market indices declined 10,3% and 4,4%.

As for crypto exchanges, spot trading volume on the ten largest centralized exchange (CEX) fell 16,3% to $5,4 trillion. Binance still dominates this segment with a 40,7% share. At the same time, among the leading HTX platforms, the only one demonstrated growth in trading volume, while the rest of the indicators fell by 1,8-34%. The worst result was recorded by Upbit, the leading exchange in Korea.

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The total value locked (TVL) of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols also decreased by 27,5%, reaching $128,6 billion by the end of the reporting period. In particular, the TVL of Ethereum-based protocols fell by 34,5% to $72,7 billion, while the blockchain’s share in this segment fell from 63,5% to 56,6%.

Solana and Base networks also experienced a 23,5% and 15,3% drop in TVL of DeFi protocols, respectively, mainly due to the decline in SOL and ETH exchange rates. Despite this, both networks increased their shares of total TVL on all blockchains.

In addition, Solana maintained its leadership in terms of trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEX). DEXs in Solana’s ecosystem accounted for 39,6% of all transactions in the reporting period, and trading volume on them grew 35,3% to $293,7 billion.

In January alone, Solana accounted for 52% of on-chain trading among the top 12 blockchains, driven by the hype surrounding political meme tokens led by the TRUMP coin from the US President. Trading volume exceeded $184,8 billion, which was a record for Solana. As a result, Ethereum’s share fell below 20% for the first time.

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Separately, analysts noted that Trump and his wife’s launch of TRUMP and MELANIA coins raised the number of tokens placed on the PumpFun launchpad on the Solana network to a new daily record of 72 000.

However, the trend for political meme tokens faded rather quickly after the collapse of the LIBRA token, which was promoted by Argentine President Javier Milei on his social networks. As a result, activity on PumpFun dropped by 56,3% and now 31 000 tokens are launched on the platform per day.