LEO, the native token of iFinex, the parent company of Bitfinex and Tether, outperformed the broader cryptocurrency market on Friday, December 19, following Bitfinex’s decision to eliminate all trading fees earlier this week.
According to CoinGecko data, the token is currently trading at $7.40, up 11% on the day and pushing it among today’s top gainers. The surge follows days of losses for the token, which was trading as high as $9.51 just a week ago.
This is LEO’s 24-hour price chart. Source: CoinGecko
The Central Exchange (CEX) has decided to eliminate trading fees for makers and takers across its platform, including spot, margin, derivatives, OTC trading, and all trading pairs for tokenized securities, according to an official blog post.
CEX Challenge
The move has reignited debate about how small crypto exchanges can attract and retain users in a space dominated by a few large players such as Binance and Bybit. Founded in 2012 and once accounting for more than 15% of the world’s monthly crypto spot trading volume, Bitfinex now ranks 33rd among CEXs in terms of 24-hour trading volume, according to CoinGecko.
The decision to lower fees comes in the wake of increased activity on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) such as Hyperliquid, Uniswap, and PancakeSwap. DEX activity hit an all-time high in October, with total DEX spot totaling $613.3 billion, up from nearly $500 billion in September.
This growth was primarily driven by Uniswap’s massive month with $170.8 billion, while PancakeSwap posted $101.9 billion in trading volume, The Defiant previously reported. Furthermore, compared to October last year, DEX trading volume increased by approximately 200% year-on-year, although weekly trading volume decreased after liquidation on October 10th.
Just earlier today, Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 upgrade, released in October and enabling permissionless perpetual markets, surpassed $10 billion in total trading volume.
“The gap is clear: DEXs operate on near-wholesale margins, while CEXs rely on broker-style fees,” a Hyperliquid community account with the handle @Hyperliquid_Hub said on X after the Bitfinex news was published.
“This structural difference makes price competition an uphill battle for centralized platforms.”
Earlier today, Bitfinex increased the operating limit for its tokenized securities platform from $210 million to $310 million following expansion approval from Kazakhstan regulators. This increase will allow Bitfinex Securities to list and trade more tokenized securities. According to RWAxyz, the tokenized real world assets (RWA) sector is currently valued at over $37 billion.
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