Arkham Exchange Faces Shutdown Threat as Trading Volume Struggles Behind Market Leaders
Arkham Exchange teeters on the brink—its trading volume can't keep pace with the giants, sparking shutdown rumors across crypto circles.
Volume Woes Tell the Tale
While top exchanges notch record highs, Arkham's numbers flatline. The platform struggles to capture even a fraction of the liquidity flowing through market leaders. It's a classic case of winner-takes-most economics playing out in real-time—where network effects create insurmountable moats.
The Infrastructure Squeeze
Running a secure, compliant exchange burns capital. Without sustained fee revenue from high-volume trading, the financial model cracks. Regulators circle, demanding more for less—a brutal equation for any operation not sitting on a war chest of reserves.
A Crowded, Ruthless Arena
New entrants flood the space daily, each promising lower fees or faster execution. Arkham gets caught in the middle—not niche enough to cultivate a devoted community, not massive enough to compete on scale. It's the worst spot in any market: the mushy middle where margins get pulverized.
What's Next for the Platform?
The path forward narrows. A pivot, a merger, or a quiet wind-down. In crypto's relentless Darwinian theater, survival favors the agile and the deeply capitalized. For everyone else? It's a race against the burn rate—a race where, sometimes, the market decides you're just another cost to be optimized away. After all, in high finance, sentiment is the first asset to get rehypothecated.
Arkham Exchange struggles to compete with market leaders
Arkham’s crypto derivatives exchange launched in late 2024 with ambitions to compete with retail trading sector veterans like Binance. The strategy focused on using Arkham’s blockchain intelligence tools and massive user base to stimulate trading activity on its proprietary platform.
However, trading volumes imply low traction. Data from CoinGecko estimates that Binance has a daily trading volume of nearly $8.9 billion. Coinbase comes after it with more than $2 billion. By comparison, Arkham Exchange was reportedly trading less than $620,000 in 24 hours.
Founded in 2020, Arkham Intelligence established its brand on blockchain data transparency. Backed by prominent investors such as Sam Altman and Binance Labs, the firm grew to have more than 3 million registered users. However, user registrations did not always translate into stable exchange activity.
Additionally, Arkham Exchange was launched with $12 million in funding from investors.
Expansion efforts fail to reverse weak momentum
By early 2025, Arkham Exchange expanded its services to offer spot crypto trading in several US states. In addition, the company also launched a mobile trading app in December to further enhance accessibility and user engagement.
In November 2025, Arkham partnered with MoonPay to integrate fiat-to-crypto onramps and offramps. The integration enabled users to make purchases with credit cards, debit cards, bank transfers, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. The initiative was aimed at making it easier to onboard them and increase capital inflows.
The reported shutdown also comes as Arkham’s native token, ARKM, trades at nearly $0.1137. CoinMarketCap data indicates that the token has dropped by around 3.5% over the past 24 hours and by 19% over the past week. Hovering right above its recent all-time low of $0.1028.
Despite a 24-hour trading volume of $24.2 million with a high 94.9% volume-to-market cap ratio, the price is under pressure. Arkham’s market cap is currently at $25.5 million, indicating a small decline, while its unlocked market cap is around $64.11 million. Although price movements remain modest, uncertainty over the exchange’s future could contribute to investor sentiment.
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