The Bitmex platform saw its reserves reduced by 49.55% in the penultimate quarter of the year; data suggests that the number of users preferring non-custodial storage increased.
Bitcoin reserves on exchanges such as Coinbase, Okex, and Bitmex dropped and decreased considerably in the penultimate quarter of the year. This is recorded by the Bituniverse platform, which estimates a decrease of more than 2 billion dollars in bitcoins for the last three months.
Users of the world’s major cryptocurrency exchanges withdrew about 187,000 bitcoins since July, data from the web said. In this way, reserves have fallen to minimum volumes that were not reported since May of last year, ecosystem sources emphasize.
One of the exchanges that presented a greater number of withdrawals is Bitmex, which saw its reserves decrease by 49.55%. At the beginning of the month, the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFCT) accused the platform of operating illegally in the United States, a complaint that earned it an untimely departure of more than 40,000 bitcoins in a matter of hours.
The exchange owned some 224,000 bitcoins before the indictment, but only about 113,000 bitcoins are currently under its management. These figures show the impact of the legal problems that the company has had with the US government. However, this is not the only exchange that has seen bitcoins in its cold wallets dwindle.
Coinbase, one of the most prominent exchanges in the United States, also posted a 9% decline in recent months. The platform had a million bitcoins at its disposal at the beginning of February, but users have withdrawn a total of 92,000 BTC, leaving some 908,560 bitcoins in their custody.
The second-largest trading volume exchange in the world, Huobi, has also processed about 53,000 BTC that were coming out of its wallet. Whereas Okex had about 240,000 bitcoins in its custody three months ago, but now its reserves do not exceed 198,000 bitcoins.
Binance and Bitfinex are among the few large exchanges without a large volume of bitcoin withdrawals. A perfect example of this is Binance, which had about 269,000 bitcoins under its power at the beginning of the year, and now it possesses about 266,000 bitcoins, a very slight decrease. Bitfinex, on the contrary, still keeps some 124,000 bitcoins in its cold wallets, a figure that has not changed much compared to what it registered in February 2020.
Exchanges own 12.85% of the total bitcoins to be issued
Graphs from the firm Glassnode show that at this moment, about 2.7 million bitcoins are kept in exchange wallets. This market would have under its administration 14.59% of the total bitcoins circulating today, as well as 12.85% of the total supply of bitcoins that will be issued as scheduled on the network (21 million BTC).
Also, 1.8 million of these bitcoins are in the wallets of the five most important exchange platforms in the ecosystem, such as Binance, Bitfinex, Okex, Huobi, and Coinbase.
This is a record that would confirm the decrease of bitcoins reserves of these companies impacts right on the distribution of the cryptocurrency in the market and owner’s pockets.
By: Jenson Nuñez.
