The current crypto winter has triggered a general decline in interest in centralized cryptocurrency exchanges (CEXs), but some cryptocurrency trading platforms have seen increased web traffic.
Some of the top crypto exchanges globally, including Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, have seen a significant increase in web traffic despite the 2022 bear market, according to website analytics platform SimilarWeb.
According to data shared with Cointelegraph, web traffic on cryptocurrency exchange FTX has soared up to 123% YoY in June 2022.
Trading platforms such as WhiteBIT and Bybit have seen even greater growth in interest, with traffic increasing 244% and 160% in the last year, respectively. Cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin has also seen a spike in interest over the past year, with traffic to its website increasing 50% annually.
The traffic growth for FTX and Bybit came against a backdrop where most CEXs experienced a massive drop in interest on their websites.
The leading cryptocurrency exchange based in the United States, Coinbase saw its web traffic drop 46% annually, experiencing one of the largest losses among US cryptocurrency exchanges. Rival exchanges like Kraken and Bittrex have also seen traffic losses, with visits down 38% and 54%, respectively.
Traffic on the global exchange Binance fell by around 40%, according to data from SimilarWeb. Leading blockchain browser and cryptocurrency wallet Blockchain.com also saw its traffic drop by 30%.
The stock trading app Robinhood has also plummeted in terms of traffic, with a 65% drop in visits to its website.
Despite the significant drop in website visits for many CEXs, the traffic of most cryptocurrency exchanges has increased in the last three years. Thus, the web traffic of Coinbase, Kraken and Binance has increased by 36%, 105% and 263% during the period, respectively. Growing traffic exchanges like Bybit and FTX have seen their visits soar 1,600% and 9,400% over the period, respectively.
On the contrary, some platforms like Bittrex.com and Blockchain.com have seen their traffic decline even over a longer period of time, with visits dropping 67% and 54% in the last three years, respectively.
The discrepancy between traffic movements on different cryptocurrency exchanges could be one reason for how different companies position themselves during tough market times.
According to David Carr, senior director of insights at Similarweb, some exchanges like FTX have shown more value than other companies by forcing acquisitions and helping failed platforms.
“More recently, FTX has been in the news as an acquirer or potential acquirer of other companies, such as some of the crypto lending and DeFi companies that were struggling but that FTX and their CEO thought had value,” Carr said. Meanwhile, Coinbase could have suffered “unfortunate headlines” about the disclosure of what would happen to customer funds if the company went bankrupthe said, adding:
“It’s not that Coinbase is necessarily on the brink of bankruptcy, but just having the company name and bankruptcy in the same sentence was not a good thing.”
Coinbase is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the United States and is a publicly traded company since April 2021. The exchange has been embroiled in a series of regulatory conflicts recently, with US authorities detaining a former Coinbase executive on insider trading allegations in July. Coinbase, which is already under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, received two new lawsuits last week.
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