October’s Crypto Shift: Centralized Exchanges Boom as Traders Flee Risky Derivatives
Risk-off mode activated. Traders ditch leverage for the safety of spot markets—proving even crypto degens have survival instincts.
Spot markets steal the show
October's volume surge wasn't fueled by 100x perpetuals—just old-fashioned buying and selling. Who knew?
The great derisking
When liquidations hit critical mass, even yield farmers remember Bitcoin's original use case: not getting rekt.
Wall Street's still trying to short this market. Good luck with that.
KuCoin leads spot growth, derivatives among all centralized exchanges
The recent market turbulence redistributed activity on exchanges. Despite the overall slowdown on South Korean markets, KuCoin saw 240% growth in spot volumes in October, after months of slowing down.
Bitfinex expanded its spot trading by 67%, while Gate added 45%. The return to spot exchanges followed the recent abandonment of meme platforms. Upbit, Bitget, and Bybit saw slower spot activity growth, though still with a slight expansion for the past month.
KuCoin derivative growth reached 185% for the month, with 66% expansion on Deribit and 41% on Crypto.com. Binance expanded its derivative volumes by 26%, though starting from a strong basis. The recent volumes do not exclude suspected wash trading or bot-generated volumes.
As a whole, traffic redirected to Gate, Bitfinex, and Upbit, while HTX lost 32% of its visits in the past month. The expansion of activity also reflected the anomalous rush to exchanges during the October 10-11 liquidations.
During that time, some of the markets were inaccessible, while others received complaints of non-transparent liquidations. Centralized exchanges absorbed inflows from both whale wallets and short-term retail sellers. Along with web usage and volumes, exchanges also saw peak stablecoin deposits, as well as increased movements of BTC from external wallets.
DEX activity peaked in the past month
The ratio of DEX to CEX remained unchanged, while both types of exchanges saw significant growth in October.
Over 19% of all exchange activity is on decentralized markets. In October, DEX achieved over $614B in total activity. Daily trading volumes now reach over $14B, as the trend continued in November.
Solana was among the leading chains, with over $148B in DEX volume for the past month. The chain surpassed Ethereum’s result, which came in close at $143B.
DEX activity remained high in 2025, mostly driven by retail adoption and better integrations. While meme token trading slowed down, DEX was a key component for swapping altcoins or wrapped BTC and ETH.
The mix of rising CEX and DEX activity showed the crypto market had high internal activity, driven by a record supply of stablecoins. While external inflows are slowing down, the crypto market now has more tools for shifting liquidity internally, to new types of projects or platforms.
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