What is the future of crypto exchanges?

“The Future of the Crypto Exchange” was the title of a panel held during Zebu Live, an event hosted by the company of the same name last week in London, UK, attended by Binance, Huobi, Globe, Swapsicle and influencer The Martini Guy.

To be specific, these panelists were involved in the discussion:

• Diego Clerc, Binance;
• Michela Silvestri, Huobi;
• James West, Globe;
• Lee Erswell, Swapsicle;
• The Martini Guy, Crypto Savings Expert.

The situation of crypto exchanges during the bear market

In a period called “crypto winter”, considering continued price falls, one would expect trading to be less productive. Instead, Diego Clerc of Binance debuts on the Zebu Live stage and says:

“During the bear market, we have less volatility, but Binance has grown to $3 trillion in volume, with spot trading making up the majority of the exchange’s revenue, but lending and NFTs are also doing well, second only to OpenSea.”

Big numbers for the exchange founded by CZ Zhao, not only for spot trading, but also for NFTs.

Huobi, for its part, has also seen a large increase in trading, Michela Silvestri explains, especially on futures, which were used by 80% of the exchange’s institutional customers during Merge period. On Huobi, the other top products are also the Earn program for staking and also lending.

Sponsors of the event also included Swapsicle, which in turn explained that as a decentralized exchange, the focus is obviously on DeFi, to provide transparency and decentralization to users.

How exchanges help the industry

Speaking about how trading platforms help the sector from its position of power, Silvestri explained “exchanges help the Web3 sector thanks to incubators and investments in new and innovative projects,” which Huobi operates, but also Binance with the BNB token which is used, among other things, to stimulate projects and local communities in DeFi world.

For his part, The Martini Guy explains that:

“exchanges care about profit, my job is instead to use exchange and educate, focusing on giving advice.”

In fact, according to the influencer and trading expert, exchanges would not participate education in a disinterested way, because the type of content the platforms share would be aimed at learning how the exchange itself works and how to trade, so not really education in the long term. In contrast, the influencer founded Crypto Saving Expert for this very purpose, in order to provide users with knowledge.

The need for regulation

A hot topic for the panel and actually touched upon during practically every speech was the regulation of the crypto industry.

In this case, primarily with respect to the futures market, which is still early stage because the products are there, but there is still a need for regulation for mass adoption.

“In Europe, for example, we cannot provide futures for retail clients,” explained Binance and Huobi, both of which are platforms that long ago already had to close this type of service to European customers.