DEX & CEX Trading Volume Exploded in May Surpassing USD 2 Trillion

Binance Coinbase Decentralized Exchange DeFi DEX Exchange

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Eimantas Žemaitis

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Eimantas Žemaitis

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Eimantas is a copywriter, Bitcoin and crypto journalist, and a life-long media student with a strong drive to explore the intersection between all forms of media, money, marketing, education, and the...

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June 26, 2023 06:56 EDT

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May 2021 has been by far the best month for crypto exchanges, both centralized (CEX) and decentralized (DEX) ones, as the total trading volume reached at least USD 2.48trn – a new record.

The number is possibly even greater, but it excludes all the volume from those crypto-to-crypto exchanges that might have been inflating their trading volume numbers.

The aggregate trading volume on decentralized exchanges has reached a new all-time high of USD 172.2bn during the month of May – more than double of the previous record of USD 80.2bn hit in February this year, per Dune Analytics.

The leading DEX last month was Uniswap – it processed more than a third – USD 76.9bn worth of trading volume. The second most popular DEX was SushiSwap as it accounted for USD 23.4bn of total transactions. The third top DEX was 0x Native, which accounted for almost USD 12.8bn of the total DEX trading volume.

Overall, the growth of trading volume on decentralized exchanges is continuing at an exponential pace. In May 2020, the total trading volume on DEXs was just USD 1.1bn, which means that the annual (YoY) growth is 15,536%.

Meanwhile, centralized exchanges experienced record trading volume too, as it surpassed the USD 2trn mark for the first time and reached USD 2.31trn, according to The Block’s Legitimate Volume Index, which includes only exchanges said to be reporting accurate volume numbers.

The achievement comes as a fifth consecutive month this year when the total monthly crypto trading volume surpassed USD 1trn mark on both centralized and decentralized exchanges.

When it comes to crypto-to-crypto spot exchanges, they reportedly facilitated over USD 2.1trn worth of unfiltered volume in May, while Binance led the way and accounted for the vast majority of the trading volume. It processed USD 1.5trn of transactions, per The Block data.

In terms of fiat-to-crypto trading volume, centralized exchanges processed USD 798.4bn worth of crypto trades. Coinbase remained the most popular platform amongst traders in May, accounting for USD 201bn of trading volume. Kraken had a record month as well, as it reached USD 100.2bn trading volume. South Korean exchange Upbit processed almost USD 80bn of crypto trades.

The total trading volume on centralized exchanges has increased by nearly 2,059% on a year-on-year basis, according to The Block’s Legitimate Volume Index.

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