FTX's old rival Binance is enjoying a growth in dominance now that Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange has collapsed
- Binance hosted 55% of all crypto spot trading last month, according to data seen by the Financial Times.
- It's extended its dominance over other crypto exchanges to achieve its largest-ever market share.
Crypto exchange Binance has grown in dominance in the months since its old rival FTX spectacularly imploded, having notched its largest-ever market share, according to a Financial Times report.
The world's biggest exchange bucked the general industry trend by winning more customers to host 55% of all crypto spot trades in January, the FT report Wednesday said citing CryptoCompare data. That's up 7 points from November last year — when Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX collapsed — and good for its highest-ever market share.
Rival exchanges Coinbase, Kraken, and Crypto.com have seen their market shares flatline over the past few months while Binance has added new customers, per the FT.
Data from CoinMarketCap shows that Binance is the world's largest crypto exchange in terms of both 24-hour trading volume and weekly visits.
Its rival FTX placed second on those metrics before it suffered a liquidity crisis in November that eventually plunged it into bankruptcy. Questions about the handling of FX customer funds led to the arrest of founder and former CEO Bankman-Fried on fraud charges.
The crisis came after CoinDesk reported that Bankman-Fried's trading firm Alameda held significant amounts of its portfolio in the exchange's native FTT token.
Binance dumped its entire $529 million FTT position on November 7, before announcing it was in talks to takeover the embattled exchange. But then its CEO Changpeng Zhao — who's often referred to by his initials "CZ" — walked away from the deal after seeing the losses listed on FTX's balance sheet.
Bankman-Fried and CZ repeatedly traded barbs on Twitter, with their rivalry intensifying in the weeks before FTX collapsed. The two crypto founders clashed on issues such as accounting practices and crypto regulation.
Their clashes prompted "The Big Short" author Michael Lewis to dub them the "Luke Skywalker" and "Darth Vader" of the digital asset space .