Kaiko: as FTX disintegrated, trading volume at the largest crypto exchanges jumped 23% to $705B in November, mainly driven by a 30% jump on Binance
David Pan / Bloomberg :
Context & Ripple Effects
The November volume spike lands on top of an already-concentrated market: research put 2021 centralized-exchange volume at over $14T, with Binance alone facilitating 67% of it (over $9.5T). When FTX disintegrated, that concentration made Binance the default landing spot — its 30% November jump accounts for most of the sector-wide 23% rise to $705B.
The longer arc matters: the same Kaiko series that recorded this surge later showed Binance's bitcoin share outside the US eroding from 81.3% to 55.3% (as OKX and Bybit gained), and liquidity only returning to pre-FTX levels two years on (by late 2024). November 2022 was the peak of flight-to-the-largest-survivor, not a durable shift.
First-order effects
- FTX's collapse pushed its trading flow to surviving venues, with Binance capturing the bulk — its 30% November volume jump drove most of the $705B sector total.
Second-order effects
- Rivals spent the following two years peeling share off the enlarged Binance, with OKX and Bybit more than doubling and tripling their bitcoin trading share respectively as traders diversified away from single-exchange exposure.
Third-order effects
- FTX's failure turned exchange counterparty risk into a selection factor, so volume concentration in one dominant venue now reads as fragility rather than a liquidity-network-effect moat — a pattern visible in Bybit later overtaking Coinbase on the back of US spot bitcoin ETF flows.
The trend: Crypto trading is migrating from single-venue concentration toward fragmented, share-shifting liquidity, with each exchange shock redistributing flow rather than consolidating it.