Exchanges: Investors flee Bitfinex, BitMEX and Huobi

We knew that investors had been leaving exchanges for a few months. But according to a new analysis by Glassnode, this is not a global exodus: some platforms are more affected than others.

A fundamental trend since “Black Thursday”

It’s a trend that was detected in March when the crisis Covid-19 started to cause financial uncertainty worldwide. Investors had started to withdraw their funds from exchanges, in order to store them in “cold” portfolios.

Since the black Thursday that torpedoed the price of Bitcoin and altcoins, there are 320,000 BTC less on trading platforms, a decrease of 12%. It’s been over a year since the number of Bitcoin on exchanges had not reached such a low level.

Beyond the crash, the arrival of the halving was also one of the reasons for this exodus. Investors had regained confidence and were betting on a lasting rise in prices: they therefore kept their BTC on more secure solutions.

But according to Glass node, the trend persists even after the halving, and it reveals a certain disenchantment of investors for several exchanges.

Investors abandon several major exchanges

When we examine the Bitcoins held on the various exchanges, we can see that investors are actually still favoring certain platforms , which have not lost or even gained BTC:

As we can see, three exchanges in particular were affected by these massive withdrawals. Huobi lost 97,000 BTC, or -24.6% of the total stock, and BitMEX lost 105,000 BTC, or -35.6% of all the Bitcoins stored.

 But it is Bitfinex which is the most affected by this phenomenon, with -133,000 BTC, which corresponds to -66% of coins on the platform.

The trend is, even more, telling when compared to other major exchanges. At Coinbase, BTC held fell only 0.2%. And Binance and Bitstamp have gained BTC over the same period.

The massive BTC withdrawals from exchanges by investors therefore seem to have been concentrated on several specific platforms. 

They show in any case that although the use of Bitcoin is on the rise, investors keep certain mistrust for storage platforms and do not hesitate to choose a new one when the one they use shows limitations.