2025 saw an interesting divergence in terms of total crypto trading volume. While the total spot trading volume surged to $18.6 trillion, up 9% on a year-on-year basis, it was a lot lower compared to the 2024 figure, which stood at 154%.
Meanwhile, crypto perpetual futures trading volume continued to be robust throughout 2025, as it climbed 29% YoY to $61.7 trillion – a strong increase of $13.8 trillion in comparison to 2024.
Crypto perps steal the spotlight from spot trading
According to a recent CryptoQuant post by CQ Research, crypto spot trading lost the limelight to perp trading in 2025. Specifically, they found that spot trading remained limited to a small group of large trading platforms.
Notably, leading crypto exchange Binance remained the undisputed leader among all crypto trading platforms as it recorded almost $7 trillion in spot trading volume in 2025. This represents 41% of the top ten exchanges in total.
Binance led both Bitcoin and altcoin markets – including markets such as ETH, XRP, BNB, TRX, and SOL. Following Binance were other crypto exchanges such as Bybit, MEXC, and Crypto.com – each recording trading volume in the range of $1.3 trillion to $1.5 trillion.
When it comes to Bitcoin perps, Binance emerged as a clear leader, with a well-defined second tier of exchanges. Binance processed Bitcoin perp futures worth $25.4 trillion in 2025, representing 42% of the top ten cryptocurrency exchanges.
The second-tier of exchanges comprised OKX, Bybit, and Bitget, with each exchange capturing between 11% and 19% of the total trading volume. Decentralized perps trading platform Hyperliquid processed $2.2 trillion worth of perp futures, commanding an overall share of 3.7%.
Most stablecoins held in Binance
As far as stablecoins are concerned, their liquidity is mostly concentrated at Binance crypto exchange, as it reported a collective $47.6 billion worth of combined USDT and USDC reserves in 2025.
Binance’s total stablecoin holdings in 2025 were 72% of total stablecoin balances across the top ten exchanges. Crypto exchange OKX followed Binance with $9.3 billion, while MEXC ranked third with $2.2 billion worth of stablecoins.
Importantly, it was USDC and not USDT that led most stablecoin adoption in 2025. Despite USDC eclipsing USDT in terms of total trading volume last year, the latter remains the leading stablecoin in the world in terms of reported market cap.
