Is 2023 really worth calling a ‘bear market’ year for crypto? A look at website traffic data for major industry domains suggests the answer may be a bit complicated.
On one hand, data from Similarweb – a web analytics platform – reveals a decline in monthly website visits for both Binance and Coinbase – two of the world’s largest crypto exchanges.
Binance experienced a significant drop of 22%, falling from 69 million visits in January to 54 million in August. Coinbase followed with a 15% decrease, with its monthly visits decreasing from 33.5 million to 28.4 million during the same period.
In contrast, data obtained by Cointelegraph from Similarweb indicates that OKX, HTX (formerly Huobi), Gate.io, CoinW, XT.com, and Bitmart have all experienced substantial growth in their website traffic year-to-date (YTD).
HTX’s website witnessed an astounding YTD surge of over 200%, escalating from 7.3 million monthly visits in January to 22 million in August. OKX followed suit, registering an impressive 185% rise in total monthly visits, climbing from 8 million in early 2023 to 22.8 million in August.
Gate.io and Coinw exchanges have recorded YTD traffic surges of 143% and 66%, respectively. XT.com and Bitmart, two crypto trading platforms, have both seen their website traffic surge by approximately 40% this year, surpassing 9.5 million monthly visits.
Kraken, a prominent U.S.-based crypto exchange, has also experienced an 11% YTD increase in website traffic, going from 5 million to 5.6 million monthly visits.
Not Just Exchanges
The trend of rising traffic is not limited to centralized exchanges (CEX): software wallets and decentralized exchanges (DEX) have also been gaining traction.
MetaMask, a major self-custodial Ethereum wallet, reported a 31% increase in traffic, with monthly visits rising from 4.5 million in January 2023 to 5.9 million in August. Binance’s self-custody wallet, Trust Wallet, has seen a 7% growth in traffic, increasing from 2.9 million to 3.1 million monthly visits this year.
Prominent DEX Uniswap has witnessed a 28% increase in website traffic year-to-date, surging from 3.9 million visits in January to 5 million in August.
Bitrefill, a cryptocurrency gift card company, saw its website reach 1 million monthly visitors by August, marking a 12% increase from around 900,000 monthly visits in January 2023.
Going by price, Bitcoin (BTC) is still up 62% year to date, bolstered by failures in the U.S. banking system and optimism of a likely Bitcoin spot ETF approval in the United States this year.
Many analysts expect Bitcoin to surge next year following such an approval, alongside Bitcoin’s “halving” in April – which will cut the asset’s supply issuance rate by 50%. In July, British multinational bank Standard Chartered predicted the asset could tap $120,000 by 2025.
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