Over the past 48 hours, the median trading volume on the top three decentralized exchanges (DEX) experienced a significant surge of 444%. This surge was a result of the recent legal actions taken by the United States securities regulator against cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Binance, leaving crypto investors in a state of shock.
Based on data aggregated from CoinGecko, the total daily trading volumes on Uniswap v3 (Ethereum), Uniswap v3 (Arbitrum), and PancakeSwap v3 (BSC) – which collectively contribute to 53% of the total DEX trading volume in the last 24 hours – witnessed an increase of over $792 million between June 5 and June 7.
In addition to this, the trading volume on Curve, a DEX facilitating stablecoin trading, saw a significant spike of 328%. As of now, the majority of trading activity on Curve revolves around the trading of USD Coin and Tether, both being stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar.
During the memecoin frenzy in May, trading volumes on DEXs briefly surpassed those of Coinbase. Crypto investors rushed to acquire tokens like Pepe (PEPE) and Turbo (TURBO) through Uniswap and several other decentralized protocols since these memecoins were not listed on major centralized exchanges.
While DEX volumes soared, Binance experienced a staggering net outflow of $778 million, indicating the difference between the value of assets entering and exiting the exchange. It is important to note that the current net outflows remain considerably lower than the total reserves held by the exchange. At present, Binance maintains a stablecoin balance exceeding $8 billion.
These market developments occur amidst a wave of legal actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) targeting crypto exchanges. On June 6, Coinbase was sued by the SEC, accusing the exchange of offering unregistered securities and operating as an unregistered securities broker, among other charges.
The day before, on June 5, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Binance, Binance.US, and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ), making similar allegations. The SEC claimed that Binance had failed to register as a securities exchange, thus conducting illegal operations within the United States. The charges against Zhao implicated him as a “controlling person” in the lawsuit.