Binance dominates crypto exchange market with 61.8% share despite rampant FUD

A new report from CryptoCompare, a provider of crypto market data, reveals that Binance’s market share rose from 59.4% in January to 61.8% in February.

Binance, the world’s largest centralized crypto exchange, experienced a surge in its spot volumes, reaching an all-time high market share with a 13.7% increase to $504 billion, the report also found.

In second place to Binance in trading volume, Coinbase saw $39.9 billion traded in February, a 29% decrease from the previous month. Kraken came in third, with $19.3 billion traded, down 11%.

Binance’s market share across derivative exchanges grew to 62.9%, the highest monthly market share ever recorded for the exchange. OKX and Bybit followed with 14% and 13.3% market share, respectively.

Why is Binance dominating so hard?

Binance’s introduction of zero-fee Bitcoin trading is a significant contributing factor.

In July 2022, to celebrate its fifth anniversary, Binance declared zero fees on 13 Bitcoin spot pairs. Since Bitcoin represents a substantial portion of the crypto market’s trade volume, the elimination of fees on BTC trading had a substantial impact on the overall dominance of spot trading volume.

Despite the bear market, Binance is intensifying its global expansion efforts. Recently, it successfully registered as a Financial Service Provider in New Zealand, and has also registered in France, Spain, and Italy markets like South Korea and Japan. This global expansion is likely to have resulted in an influx of new traders for the exchange, thereby enhancing its dominance in trading volume, analysts believe.

Still – plenty of ongoing FUD against Binance

However, with news that regulators in the U.S. and other countries are starting to intensify their scrutiny of the exchange, fear, uncertainty and doubt continue to surround Binance.

Changpeng Zhao, the co-founder and CEO, said in a recent Twitter AMA on March 9 that as volume increases, the exchange’s focus becomes more on product development, refinement, and education.

“We will continue to focus on product development,” CZ said during the AMA. “Protect users. Build and build,” he later tweeted.

However, on March 5, an article was published in the Wall Street Journal that purported to reveal internal Telegram messages from the CEO that suggested Binance was closer in ties to Binance.US than previously disclosed.

In response, CZ tweeted last week “4” — referencing an earlier Tweet reminding his 8.2 million followers to “ignore FUD, fake news, attacks, etc.”

The 4 quickly became a meme on crypto Twitter, with users uploading photos of themselves holding up four fingers.

TheFUD “just gives us more exposure and more publicity. Most users are very smart today, and we actually only want the smart users on our platform,” CZ said, “the people who believe in FUD, we actually probably don’t want those users on our platform.”

Binance continues to seek Voyager clients

In the March 9 Twitter AMA, CZ said he and Binance remain committed to seeing the deal for Voyager go through.

“We’re still committed to Voyager and very committed to going to that deal and helping the users there,” he said.

However, CZ also revealed that Binance had scaled back on some commitments, citing the US as having a more negative industry perspective in terms of regulatory clarity and adoption stance.

“I think the US this year doesn’t look good.”