Crypto exchanges fill retail trading slump with $450 billion monthly macro futures

Centralized crypto exchanges are facing one of their weakest retail trading periods in more than two years, but some are offsetting that slowdown by expanding into Wall Street-style perpetual futures tied to gold, silver, oil, stocks and indexes. CryptoQuant said spot trading volume fell to $679 billion in April, the lowest monthly level since October 2023, while centralized exchange spot volume was down 46% year over year and 67% below the October 2025 market peak. The report suggests the retreat is hitting the industry's traditional retail-driven model and that demand for digital asset exposure has weakened across both spot and derivatives markets. Even so, larger average trade sizes and concentrated liquidity point to a more professional user base. Gate posted the highest average Bitcoin spot trade size among major centralized venues in 2026 at about $4,000, while average Bitcoin perpetual futures trade size on Gate reached roughly $8,900. Kraken, MEXC and OKX also ranked highly in average Bitcoin spot trade size, and Kraken and OKX remained among the leaders in Bitcoin futures trade size. In Bitcoin spot markets, Gate and Binance held among the deepest 1% order books, averaging roughly 200,000 to 250,000 BTC in depth, while Gate regularly led Bitcoin perpetual depth with 750,000 to 1.3 million BTC daily. Against that backdrop, traditional-finance perpetual futures (no-expiry leveraged contracts) on crypto exchanges climbed to about $450 billion per month in March 2026, with gold and silver making up more than 90% of peak-month volume. Gate handled nearly $290 billion of TradFi futures volume in March, while Binance reached $109 billion and kept activity elevated through May at $64 billion. For 2026 so far, Gate leads with about $368 billion in TradFi futures volume and Binance follows with $298 billion, together accounting for about two-thirds of the market. The report indicates exchanges are increasingly relying on professional traders, deep liquidity and 24/7 access to traditional assets as they adapt to fading retail participation in crypto.