Market share of top crypto exchanges passes $1T: CryptoCompare report

Out of the 160 cryptocurrency exchanges analyzed in a recent report, half control roughly 85% of the total market share.

According to a CryptoCompare Research report published today, exchanges that the analytics firm rated as “top tier” gained 13% of the market share from October 2020 to January. This put the market share of these 84 exchanges at roughly 74%, with more than $1 trillion in assets.

However, CryptoCompare said this percentage likely rose to 85% for January. Given that the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is $1.47 trillion at the time of publication, the market share of these exchanges may now be more than $1.2 trillion.

The report attributed the increase in market share to retail and professional crypto traders turning to exchanges with seemingly lower risk as the price of Bitcoin (BTC) surged past $20,000 in late December 2020 and $30,000 in January. 

However, one of the more significant reasons for the increased market share may be CryptoCompare rating 16 more exchanges as “top tier” than in October 2020 — a designation meant to measure an exchange's level of risk rather than its superiority. The firm noted that many exchanges are now complying with “toughened” Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundring requirements. Many are also providing increased transparency and improving their overall operational status. 

According to CryptoCompare’s results, 44% of the 160 exchanges analyzed offere the ability to “query full historical trade data via a public API endpoint,” compared with 37% in July 2020. In addition, the percentage of exchanges rated as having “poor or inadequate” KYC systems according to CipherTrace fell from 44% in July 2020 to 33% in January.

The report specifically mentions Coinbase, Gemini, Bitstamp, Kraken, itBit and Luno as the "lowest risk exchanges. Others such as Binance, FTX, OKCoin, Huobi Global and Bitfinex are listed in the next "lower tier" category.