Should You Worry About Bitcoin Withdrawals On Exchanges? New Data Sheds Light

Bitcoin holders have been paying attention to the amount of BTC leaving crypto exchange platforms. Over the past week, the cryptocurrency’s liquidity has been moving, raising concerns about the stability of these venues and that marketmakers might be exiting the space.

As the U.S. faces a banking crisis, crypto exchanges crumble, and uncertainty in the macroeconomic landscape increases, investors are vulnerable to Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD). A specific type of news and narrative creates fear in the crypto market.

Bitcoin itself was negatively reacting to this news; as fear spiked, the price of BTC took a turn for the downside. Despite today’s profits, the cryptocurrency has recorded a 2.2% loss in the past seven days as of this writing.

Crypto analytics firm Jarvis Labs shared data from two sources regarding the Bitcoin liquidity on exchanges to address these concerns. The first piece of data comes from Conor Ryder, a researcher at Kaiko, who claimed that Bitcoin’s market depth on exchanges remains unchanged.

The data is associated with Binance’s U.S. subsidiary, where investors pay a premium to purchase BTC compared to other platforms, such as Coinbase and Kraken. The premium emerged due to Binance.US losing the capacity to provide an efficient crypto-to-fiat offramp.

The U.S. crypto exchange has been suffering after losing its bank connection due to increased scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The analyst stated the following while sharing the chart below:

People spotting a BTC premium on Binance US and seem to be jumping the gun saying its a big market maker pulling funds. No change in market depth on the exchange makes me nearly certain this isn’t the case yet IMO more likely Binance US offering slower USD withdrawal times after their struggles to get banked (…).

The chart above shows that BTC’s market depth has seen almost no changes since late April. The rumors about marketmakers leaving the space began circulating due to a Bloomberg report claiming that two of the largest, Jane Street and Jump, are scaling back on their crypto trading operations.

The decision follows an increase in regulatory oversight, but it only seems to apply to the U.S. market. According to Kaiko and liquidity provider Macro Cephalopod, international crypto trading venues seem unaffected.

Here you go, average quoted size at bbo for Binance BTCUSDT (in USDT) plotted with volatility, as you can see there is almost no change since start of Apr, and the main determinant of top of book size is vol (when vol goes up, MMs quote smaller, when it drops MMs quote bigger) https://t.co/MtV5CcsfP5 pic.twitter.com/KTWCdZRsU5

— cephalopod (@macrocephalopod) May 10, 2023

In that sense, Bitcoin’s liquidity and market depth is liquidity to change in the short term except for U.S.-based crypto investors. The latter could find it more difficult to gain exposure to the asset as the SEC and other regulators enforce their approach to crypto companies.

Cover image from Unsplash, chart from Tradingview