In 2025, cryptocurrency exchange activities witnessed a remarkable surge, with total trading volumes for both centralized exchanges (CEXs) and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) soaring to approximately $18.6 trillion. This figure marks a 9% increase from the previous year, although it represents a significant slowdown compared to the staggering 154% growth noted in 2024.
In addition to spot trading, perpetual futures trading displayed robust growth, climbing by 29% year-over-year to reach $61.7 trillion. This increase translates to a $13.8 trillion jump over 2024, highlighting sustained investor interest in futures contracts.
Amidst this growth, Binance solidified its position as the dominant player in the market, leading Bitcoin trading with a colossal $25.4 billion in volume, which accounted for nearly half of the total combined volume of the ten largest exchanges. Following Binance, exchanges like OKX, Bybit, and Bitget formed a competitive second tier, together handling between 11% and 19% of trading traffic. Additionally, Hyperliquid contributed $2.2 trillion to the market, representing 3.7% of the total volume.
According to data from CryptoQuant, the majority of spot trading activity was concentrated among a small number of major exchanges. Specifically, Binance reported around $7 trillion in spot trading volume for the fiscal year, which constituted an impressive 41% of the total volume from the top 10 exchanges.
The analytics platform indicated that Binance not only dominated Bitcoin trading but also exhibited strong performance in altcoins such as Ethereum (ETH), XRP, BNB, TRON (TRX), and Solana (SOL). Other exchanges like Bybit, MEXC, and Crypto.com reported trading volumes ranging between $1.3 trillion and $1.5 trillion, but remained considerably behind Binance in terms of market share.
Despite a robust overall market, specific cryptocurrencies faced challenges. For instance, Ethereum experienced minimal growth, with an increase of only 1.68%. Meanwhile, BNB saw a rise of approximately 37%, although it faced a decline of about 23% in the last three months of 2025. The market”s bullish trend indicated strong underlying demand, particularly associated with the Binance ecosystem, despite some short-term profit-taking impacting prices.
Other cryptocurrencies also showed varied performance. TRON recorded a significant annual increase of around 36%, even though it slipped by 6% in the last quarter. Conversely, XRP and Solana closed the year with declines of approximately -15% and -19.37%, respectively, with significant drops of -17.53% and -30.16% in Q4.
The dominance of Binance extended to stablecoin reserves, with USDT and USDC reserves reaching approximately $47.6 billion, representing 72% of the total balance among the top ten exchanges. Following Binance, OKX and MEXC held $9.3 billion and $2.2 billion in stablecoins, respectively. The concentration of stablecoin liquidity among a small number of exchanges was evident, as Bybit, Kraken, and Coinbase held more modest shares of the market.
By the end of the year, Binance”s stablecoin reserves stood at around $49 billion, having peaked at a record $51 billion earlier in November. This figure reflected a 31.8% increase in reserves, with Binance alone holding $117 billion in BTC, ETH, USDT, and USDC. In contrast, Coinbase was ranked second with 22.1% of $81 billion, while Bitfinex, OKX, and Upbit followed with approximately $44.4 billion, $23 billion, and $20 billion, respectively.
