Crypto exchanges recorded highest upticks in trading volume since August 2024. As per data sourced to businessline from Crebaco, a credit rating agency for crypto exchanges and blockchains, crypto exchanges - CoinDCX, ZebPay and Bitbns - saw their trading volumes go up by 429 per cent, 240 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively, between August and November 2024.

The cryptocurrecy sector reported a flurry of excitement in the first week of November following the victory of Donald Trump in the US elections. Exchanges such as CoinDCX saw a 506 per cent increase in trading volume by November 11 after a 33 per cent decline in volumes between August and September, a surge of 44 per cent from September to October and then another decline of 8 per cent from October to November.

Similarly, ZebPay’s trading volume witnessed a 387 per cent increase in volumes in November’s first week, post-US elections. It declined 63 per cent between August and September, increased 139 per cent from September to October and declined 20 per cent from October to November. However, Bitbns alone did not report triple figure increases in trading volumes, only recording an 18 per cent increase by November 9 after which then slumped down by 19 per cent by November 11.

Rise in prices

According to Sidharth Sogani Jain, Founder of Crebaco and CEO of Blue Aster Capital, the trading volumes increased owing the price increase in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin following the US elections. Estimating Bitcoin to be prices around $82,000 in early November, Jain predicted the price to increase to $100,000 by December. However, despite the increase in volumes, he pointed out that new user acquisition remains low in India for this sector.

“We haven’t seen any new users getting onboarded mainly because Wazir X is not working and people have low confidence on other exchanges. People don’t like the ecosystem here [in India] because it is not regulated,” Jain told businessline.

In June 2024, WazirX India’s most popular cryptocurrency exchange was hacked, leading to a loss of $235 million. To deal with the stolen amount, the company froze transactions and ended up using nearly 60 percent of investors’ money. The incident came as a shock to many, discouraging investments in crypto at the time.

User activity

On the other hand, Balaji Srihari, Business Head of CoinSwitch, reported doubled user activity on its platform post elections although the numbers are still not back to the 2021-22 hype. In terms of trading volume, Srihari said the platform saw a 7.5 surge in volumes in the first week of November.

“I think there’s a lot of good news for crypto. One was that Donald Trump, a pro-crypto person, winning elections and the rate-cuts of 25 bp and expectation of another 25 bp cuts,” Srihari told businessline.

In September, the US Federal Reserve had talked about a 25-basis point rate cut, the first in over four years. However, market experts speaking with businessline had not expressed much enthusiasm on the prospect stating that 25 bp rate cut is already baked into prices. Even a 50-bp rate cut was estimated to result in a temporary jolt to the market.