FTX, Bybit rise in web traffic despite overall traffic drop on CEXs

The ongoing cryptocurrency winter has triggered an overall decline in interest in centralized crypto exchanges (CEX), but some crypto trading platforms have seen a rise in website traffic.

A few major global crypto exchanges, including Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, have experienced a significant increase in web traffic despite the bear market of 2022, according to the website analytics platform SimilarWeb.

According to data shared with Cointelegraph, web traffic on the FTX crypto exchange has surged as much as 123% year-over-year (YoY) by June 2022.

Trading platforms like WhiteBIT and Bybit have seen even bigger growth in interest, with traffic surging 244% and 160% over the past year, respectively. KuCoin crypto exchange has also seen an increase in interest over the past year, with its website’s traffic edging up 50% YoY.

The traffic growth of FTX and Bybit came against the backdrop of the majority of CEXs experiencing a massive drop in interest in their websites.

The major United States-based crypto exchange Coinbase saw its web traffic plummet 46% YoY, experiencing one of the biggest losses among U.S. crypto exchanges. Rival exchanges like Kraken and Bittrex have also posted traffic losses, with visits dropping 38% and 54%, respectively.

The traffic on the global Binance exchange tumbled about 40%, according to data from SimilarWeb. The major blockchain browser and crypto wallet Blockchain.com also saw its traffic dropping 30%.

Crypto-friendly stock trading app Robinhood has also plummeted traffic-wise, with website visits dipping 65% YoY.

Despite a significant drop in website visits on many CEXs, the traffic on most crypto exchanges has still been up over the past three years. As such, web traffic on Coinbase, Kraken and Binance is up 36%, 105% and 263% over the period, respectively. Growing-traffic exchanges like Bybit and FTX have seen their visits skyrocket 1,600% and 9,400% over the period, respectively.

In contrast, some platforms like Bittrex.com and Blockchain.com have seen some traffic decline even over a longer period of time, with visits dropping 67% and 54% over the past three years, respectively.

The discrepancy between traffic movements on different crypto exchanges might be a reason for how different companies position themselves during tough times on the market.

Related: Coinbase partners with BlackRock to create new access points for institutional crypto investing

According to David Carr, senior insights manager at Similarweb, some exchanges like FTX have demonstrated more courage than other firms by forcing acquisitions and helping bankrupt platforms.

“More recently, FTX has been in the news as an acquirer or potential acquirer of other companies, such as some of the crypto lending and DeFi companies that were struggling but that FTX and its CEO thought had value,” Carr said. In the meantime, Coinbase might have suffered from "unfortunate headlines" about disclosing what would happen to customer funds if the company went bankrupt, he said, adding:

"Not that Coinbase is necessarily on the verge of bankruptcy, but just having the company name and bankruptcy in the same sentence was not a good thing.”

Coinbase is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the United States and is a publicly traded company since April 2021. The exchange has been involved in a number of regulatory conflicts recently, with U.S. authorities arresting a former Coinbase manager on allegations of insider trading in July. Already being investigated by the Securities and Exchanges Commission, Coinbase was slapped with two fresh legal claims last week.