As a reminder, Bitcoin rose in value by 69 percent during the first quarter, putting it ahead of most assets in the market – including those outside of the cryptocurrency niche. The most impressive result among the top coins in terms of market capitalisation was only Solana SOL. For Solana SOL, the first quarter of 2023 was 104 per cent.

Trading volumes at the beginning of the year showed a significant rebound. At the same time, against the backdrop of 2021 and 2022, the figure still gives off a dip.

With this in mind, the start of this year has been positive for trading platforms. This is confirmed by a survey of experts.

What’s happening with cryptocurrencies

Overall in the first quarter of 2023, total trading volume on the top 15 cryptocurrency exchanges rose 40 percent to $10.8 billion compared to the previous quarter. March 14 to 15 saw the most notable increase in the index – just in those days there was an acute period of banking crisis in the US, which made ordinary people not only doubt the capabilities of traditional financial institutions, but also interested in digital assets.

According to CryptoSlate’s sources, Binance dominated throughout the quarter. The largest exchange owns around 55 percent of the global market. At the same time in the fourth quarter of 2022, the market share of Binance was 60 percent – probably caused by the consequences of the collapse of FTX and a blow to the image of exchanges.

At the same time, the last four weeks have seen a significant increase in the volume of BTC transferred to Binance. According to Glassnode, Binance’s Bitcoin wallet balance has increased by more than 52,000 BTC equivalent to $1.5 billion during that time, reaching a total of 692,880 BTC. At the same time, the global balance – that is, all coins held on centralised exchanges – increased by more than 27,000 BTC over the same period.

There are two reasons for the growth in the number of coins in wallets, Coindesk reports. The first is that investors are gradually recovering from the collapse of FTX and beginning to actively use exchanges again. The second is that some market participants may be preparing to sell bitcoins transferred to exchanges, as coins are usually sent to trading platforms for that very purpose.

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Back to the TokenInsight research. Another metric published by the analysts is the trading volume in spot pairs of the top ten exchanges, i.e. by market value of assets. This figure rose by 16 percent in the first quarter of 2023, indicating an increase in investor interest in this transaction category.

Derivatives trading is also showing an upward trend. Trading volume in these instruments on the top ten exchanges rose 30 per cent in the quarter to $7.8 trillion.

Another chart is the returns on the exchanges’ native tokens. Here’s the relevant chart.

Most such coins fell heavily in value at the end of 2022 due to the FTX incident. Nevertheless, the bull run of the market could seriously change the mood of the crowd – some of the sample coins have already shown a rise in value of tens of per cent.

At the same time, the market has seen an increase in bitcoins that are considered ancient. These are coins that have not moved for at least seven years. According to analysts, the total number of such crypto-assets stands at 4.25 million. However, 3.9 million of that amount of ancient bitcoins remained immobile immediately after the first transaction involving them.

Analysts have also studied what happens to large investors, or so-called whales, who have more than a thousand bitcoins in their addresses. As Glassnode experts note, the average number of bitcoins in their possession today is 5,350 coins. Most importantly, the total number of coins held by this category of investors is gradually becoming smaller. As of today, they hold 46 percent of all BTC in circulation.


We believe that the increase in the listed figures clearly indicates a renewed interest from investors in crypto. First, the digital asset industry has been in a bear market for quite some time, after which growth should come one way or another. Second, the traditional financial system represented by banks is now showing far from the best results, so linking up with government-independent decentralised assets does not seem as reckless as it once did.


We discuss what is happening to the digital asset market in great detail in our cryptochat. There we share curious news and also wait for the long-awaited bullrun to arrive.