Bitfinex, a state-of-the-art digital asset trading platform, has shown the most depth of liquidity in bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple’s XRP as leading cryptocurrencies come to the fore in a risk-on, risk-off market.
Bitfinex’s underlying strength and depth of liquidity was most evident over a 24-hour period on March 12/13 when the price of bitcoin plummeted by 50 percent. According to CryptoCompare’s March Exchange Review, Bitfinex represented the majority of top-tier exchange trading volume across bitcoin/US Dollar (BTC/USD) and bitcoin/Tether (BTC/USDT) markets during the period of bitcoin’s precipitous price drop.
Research by The Block found that the Bitfinex exchange has the most liquidity in BTC, ETH and XRP pairs in the industry.
“When bitcoin crashed, Bitfinex was one of the very few exchanges that did not suffer performance or infrastructure issues or huge spreads,” said Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Bitfinex. “The fact that liquidity is deep enables Bitfinex to contain the big market swings. When the market moves like this, the volume on other platforms doesn’t reflect in healthy liquidity in markets.”
Bitfinex’s place as the go-to place to trade, providing genuine liquidity, was most apparent during the first hour of bitcoin’s massive price drop, according to CryptoCompare. Among top-tier exchanges excluding Coinbase, OKEx and Bitstamp, “between 10:40 am and 11 am, it represented 40 percent of volume on average among these exchanges,” the report continued. During the brief period, Bitfinex was handling up to $11.8 million worth of trades per minute.
“Bitfinex has the best API’s, the best latency and infrastructure that allows traders to react and provide liquidity and close the spreads even during crazy market conditions,” Ardoino added.
The market crash on March 12/13 saw daily volumes hit $75.9 billion in a single day (March 13) – the single greatest daily volume recorded in cryptoasset history, according to CryptoCompare.
Bitfinex is leveraging its position as a one-stop-shop for crypto trading, offering a variety of services, including margin trading with up to 5x leverage. The exchange also offers users access to a perpetual swap contract offering 100x leverage through its affiliate, iFinex Financial Technologies Limited.
