Bitcoin continues its sluggish price trajectory as it entered the second week of January. However, the coin is now at almost a 90-day low, soon after the Federal Reserve hinted at an interest rate hike.
With that being said, CryptoCompare’s Exchange Review for December 2021 also explained[1] how the weak price has affected spot volume. The report noted,
“In December, spot volume from the 15 largest Top-Tier exchanges decreased 22.6% compared to November, with total spot volumes of $1.4 trillion.”
This forms the backdrop of Bitcoin experiencing its largest month-on-month losses in December, as per the report. A fall not seen since the asset’s 49.2% crash in May 2021, from the price of $58,943 to $29,925 in just 19 days.
This time around, BTC is hovering[2] close to $42,000, already clocking in losses of 9.4% over the past week and 17% in the past month on CoinGecko.
However, in December, CryptoCompare highlighted that Lower-Tier spot volumes increased close to 117% to their highest level in seven months to $518 billion. With Binance leading the list of individual exchanges as the largest top-tier spot exchange by volume for the month after trading $655 billion in value. Its trade volume was still down by 29.8% compared to its previous month.
Meanwhile, another report by Bloomberg[3] also noted falling volume in top exchanges, as investors turned to “hodling” in the current environment.
Owen Lau, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. told Bloomberg,
“Declining price could drive lower trading volume when it gets to the point to discourage traders to get engaged. There is a possibility that digital assets price to go flat such as getting into a crypto winter after a price decline.”
Interestingly, leading crypto exchange FTX.US is also seeing lower trading volumes
