Kaiko: monthly spot trading volumes on decentralized crypto exchanges dropped 76% YoY to $21B in June 2023; centralized exchanges slid 69% YoY to $429B
Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg :
Context & Ripple Effects
June's numbers land mid-slump rather than at a turning point: Kaiko had already logged the average daily volume for the top 10 tokens falling from $18B in Q1 to $10B in Q2 amid the US regulatory crackdown (Q2's volume slide), and CCData's later read shows monthly spot volume roughly halving from $922.9B in October 2022 to $461.3B a year after FTX's collapse. The YoY declines also flatter the base period — November 2022 volumes had spiked 23% to $705B as traders fled FTX for Binance and other venues (the post-FTX volume spike).
The sharper DEX drop is the more striking signal given how recent the mania was: decentralized exchanges posted $1T+ in 2021 volume, up 858% from 2020 (DEX's 2021 surge). A 76% YoY fall to just $21B suggests the speculative retail layer that powered on-chain trading has thinned faster than centralized venue traffic.
First-order effects
- Both venue types lose transaction-fee revenue immediately, with DEX liquidity providers and token issuers hit hardest as $21B of monthly flow cannot sustain the long tail of pools and pairs built for 2021-scale volume.
- Centralized exchanges retain overwhelming share — $429B versus $21B — so the downturn pressures smaller CEXs' fixed costs first while Binance-class venues absorb a disproportionate slice of what flow remains.
Second-order effects
- Exchanges respond by culling listings: Kaiko counts 3,445+ tokens or pairs delisted or dropped for inactivity in 2023, 15% more than 2022 (the delisting wave) — thin books cost more to maintain than they earn.
- With spot fees shrinking, competition shifts toward derivatives and perps, where leverage sustains notional volume even as spot interest wanes.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, spot trading consolidates around a handful of deep-liquidity venues and major pairs while the thousands of marginal tokens lose exchange support entirely — a structural win for concentration over the open-listing model.
- Sustained low spot turnover pushes the industry's economics toward products that manufacture volume (derivatives, structured offerings) rather than organic asset exchange, inviting closer regulatory scrutiny of where the remaining activity actually sits.
The trend: Crypto spot liquidity is contracting across both decentralized and centralized venues, with the post-2021 retail wave unwinding fastest on-chain and exchanges consolidating around fewer tokens and deeper books.