Centralized exchanges face a hard blow amid cooling liquidations

Bitcoin’s sideways movement close to the $90,000 mark has calmed down the broader cryptocurrency market with declining trading volumes on centralized exchanges.

Binance, the largest crypto exchange by trading volume, saw a 15.2% decline in its daily trading volume to $26.6 billion, according to data provided by CoinGecko. The CEX platform has listed 385 tokens with 1,260 trading pairs so far.

Data shows a 14.6% decline in the Bybit trading volume to $5.7 billion. The Dubai-based trading platform has listed more tokens than Binance — 512 crypto assets — but fewer trading pairs than the largest crypto exchange — currently 630, the most popular being Bitcoin (BTC)/USDT.

The third-largest CEX, the Seychelles-based OKX, witnessed an 18% drop in its trading volume to $4.6 billion, according to CoinGecko data.

The decline in CEX trading volume comes along with a 4% decline in the total decentralized exchange trading activity to $9 billion on all platforms, per CoinGecko.

Bitcoin’s consolidation around the $90,000 zone brought a market-wide cooldown as some of the leading cryptocurrencies — Ethereum (ETH), BNB (BNB) and Toncoin (TON), to name a few — have entered the overbought zone.

This movement is usually considered normal since both long-term and short-term investors would try to take profits due to the appealing prices.

Crypto liquidations decline

The total crypto liquidations have been constantly declining from Nov. 12’s $869 million to $231 million — $141 million longs and $90 million shorts — over the past 24 hours, according to data from Coinglass. 

Bitcoin took the lead with $37.3 million in liquidations — $24.7 million longs and $12.6 million shorts. 

As the liquidations decrease, investors eye a further bullish momentum with a 1.5% rise in the total crypto open interest to $104 billion, per Coinglass data. 

The increase in the total OI could hint at a higher market-wide volatility as the market is hovering in the “extreme greed” zone.

Notably, Bitcoin’s momentum either way could potentially drag the broader market with it due to its 56.2% dominance.