Trading Volumes to Increase by 50% in 2019, Study Says

A report published on Bloomberg and conducted by ICO advisory company Satis Group reveals that cryptocurrencies as a whole will experience a 50-percent jump in trading volumes in 2019. In addition to this, Satis predicts that cryptocurrencies will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9% all the way through 2028.

Unfortunately, the study did not provide a clear methodology to show how it came up to this conclusion. However, its snapshot of current trading volumes and how it takes them apart helps us understand how exchanges are faring in the modern cryptocurrency world.

Eyeing the exchange market

Unsurprisingly, the share of decentralized exchanges (DEXs) in the overall digital asset market is roughly 0.2%, with centralized exchanges taking the lion’s share of trading activity.

“Most DEX’s do not allow fiat trading, consequently allowing CEX’s to hold majority [sic] of market trading volume share. Though most exchanges, as well as the bulk of trading and liquidity, are centralized, there has been much investment and development into decentralized exchanges (DEXs)... While there are a number of decentralized exchanges actively trading and others in various stages of development, they have not yet reached parity with traditional exchanges in terms of ease-of-use, liquidity, confirmation times, and community adoption,” Satis Group wrote.

The company added that the tiny volume of DEXs we currently observe isn’t going to remain the status quo much longer. Satis states in its study that we should see decentralized exchanges become more popular “over the next 5-10 years.”

In a speech during the FinTech Canada 2018 conference, Huobi Canada general manager Ross Zhang made it clear that he currently has no optimism for decentralized exchanges because of their incapacity to handle large transaction volumes.

“Because the transaction speed for decentralized exchanges is not really good right now, they cannot support the transaction volume that we have as a centralized exchange,” he said.

Ultimately, the two things keeping DEXs from gaining popularity are the lack of an ability to trade fiat pairs and the fact that there’s a delay when submitting buy or sell orders. If they don’t rectify these problems somehow, they will remain niche products for HODLers.