It was good to be on @laurashin's podcast. Talking about macro trends is not super intuitive without charts and data so I will attempt to summarize below.
Markets are not very active currently. Traded volume on Bitwise 10 exchanges hit an 8-month low in November with daily avg traded volume of $1.43B in November (12% down from October and 61% down from June) 
Binance is capturing more market share while Bittrex and Bitfinex continue to struggle
When it comes to liquidity, though, Bitfinex is still king. For Bitcoin, Ethereum and even XRP. Other than Bitfinex, Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp, Binance, and FTX appear to have the deepest liquidity.
GBTC, which is one of the best indicators for institutional demand, has about $2B in AUM. By the end of November, Grayscale held 261,594 bitcoins or about 1.45% of the total circulating supply. Nearly 55,000 bitcoins were added to the fund in 2019.
An increase in the GBTC premium signals more demand for GBTC and therefore also a growing institutional interest. The premium has surpassed 100% in two months — May 2017 and August 2017. It’s currently about 29%; much lower than the local high of 40% in July.
A similar trend as with spot volume can be observed by looking at the monthly traded volume of GBTC. The traded volume in July reached nearly $2 billion but has since continued to fall each month. The volume in November was less than a quarter of that — about $500 million.
Following its underwhelming start in late September, Bakkt recently witnessed a significant (and sustained) increase in the trading volume. Bakkt’s open interest reached an all-time high of $4.6 million on Nov. 29, which indicates that new money is flowing into the market.
CME continues to dominate Bakkt in terms of futures trading volume but the lead has been decreasing. In early November, Bakkt’s volume was less than 5% of CME’s but towards the end of the month, it was reaching as much as 9%. CME’s open interest has declined in November.
We also talked about how the rally this year appears to have been driven mainly by large traders and institutional investors rather than retail (like in 2017). LMAX, primarily an institutional exchange, is hitting volume higher than Bitstamp and Kraken
Lastly, we touched on value settled on Bitcoin, Ethereum and other blockchains. Bitcoin has, by far, the highest amount of value settled — $690B in 2019 (projected). It’s followed by Ethereum ($134B), XRP ($54B), Bitcoin Cash ($51B) and Litecoin ($19B).
What's interesting is how closely value settled correlates with the traded volume. Cryptocurrencies, spearheaded by Bitcoin, still appear to be mainly an instrument for speculation. And there is nothing wrong with that.
However, this year was massively positive in terms of financial infrastructure. Markets are getting more mature - there are now legitimate spot exchanges, closed-ended funds, futures, options, perps. And it's only getting better.
One thing I forgot to add is that outside of Bitwise 10, there are other 11 exchanges that appear to have real trading volume based on the analysis of web traffic. All of these are very country-specific, which is why they are under the radar
These 11 exchanges are:
- @indodax (Indonesia)
- @lunomoney (Africa)
- @cex_io (UK)
- @zaifdotjp (Japan)
- @YobitExchange
- @GOPAX_kr (S. Korea)
- @Exmo_Com (Russia)
- @KorbitOfficial (S. Korea)
- @CoinoneOfficial (S. Korea)
- @BinanceAmerica (USA)
- @bitbank_inc (Japan)
- @indodax (Indonesia)
- @lunomoney (Africa)
- @cex_io (UK)
- @zaifdotjp (Japan)
- @YobitExchange
- @GOPAX_kr (S. Korea)
- @Exmo_Com (Russia)
- @KorbitOfficial (S. Korea)
- @CoinoneOfficial (S. Korea)
- @BinanceAmerica (USA)
- @bitbank_inc (Japan)
