Binance’s trading volume in 2025 has reached levels exceeding the combined totals of its leading competitors, marking a new phase in the concentration of exchange activity.

Data compiled by CryptoQuant shows Binance handling up to double the trading volume of all other exchanges combined, a development that is raising questions about the structure of liquidity in global markets.

Per TokenInsight data, Binance recorded approximately $8.39 trillion in trading volume during the first quarter of 2025, accounting for 36.5% of global activity despite a decline in overall market volume.

During Q1, Binance’s average daily trading volume stood near $36.6 billion, compared to Bybit’s $7.9 billion, OKX’s $6.5 billion, and Coinbase’s $5.6 billion, placing it several multiples ahead of rivals. Research from CryptoQuant further recorded that Binance’s spot trading volume for the year had surpassed $1.9 trillion, outpacing Coinbase, Crypto.com, and OKX combined.

Market share concentration became more pronounced by midyear. Binance’s spot trading volume was nearly eight times higher than Coinbase’s, securing a market share of roughly 42%.

By June, Binance’s spot trading activity approached the combined total of all other exchanges, a rare scenario not seen since early 2024, when Bitcoin surged past $70,000.

The platform’s strength spans multiple areas beyond spot trading. Mid-2025 performance extended into futures markets, stablecoin flows, capital inflows, and on-chain metrics.

During Bitcoin’s all-time high this summer, Binance recorded nearly twice the total trading volume of all competitors combined, even as broader market activity slowed.

This level of concentration carries market implications. European Securities and Markets Authority officials have previously warned of systemic risks when a single platform processes a disproportionate share of trading volume, describing it as a “considerable concern” in regulatory communications reported by Reuters in April 2024.

Market structure is further shaped by liquidity distribution. While Binance leads in spot trading, other platforms such as OKX surpass it in liquidation volumes, reflecting different risk dynamics across venues.

The historical pattern of Binance’s dominance coinciding with price movement also remains in focus. A similar volume imbalance in early 2024 preceded a steep rise in Bitcoin’s price. The question looms as to whether high trading concentration might again affect directional momentum in major assets.

The scale of activity also intersects with regulatory oversight. In late 2023, some interpreted the U.S. Department of Justice settlement with Binance as an acknowledgment of the exchange’s position as too large to unwind without broader market disruption. That perception has carried forward into 2025 as the exchange extends its dominance despite market contraction.

Daily and quarterly figures reveal the magnitude of the gap. Binance’s $36.6 billion daily average places it nearly nine times larger than Coinbase, while its 42% spot market share marked the highest in ten months.

As of press time, volumes are down across the industry, but Binance’s trading volumes still match or surpass those of all competitors, redefining the balance of the exchange landscape in 2025.

The concentration of activity illustrates the degree to which one platform has become the primary gateway for liquidity, shaping both opportunities and risks in global digital asset markets.

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Following a new all-time high in dollars, Bitcoin price predictions are flooding in alongside diverging institutional theses, ranging from macro-driven valuations to long-tail adoption models.

A wave of bold projections from six to nine figures with disparate assumptions underpinning each outlook.

With predictions varying across time frames from this year to 2030, the table below shows a breakdown of the average Bitcoin price targets currently being forecast.

ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood recently reiterated her thesis that Bitcoin could reach $2.4 million by the decade’s end. Wood cited growing institutional demand and BTC’s monetary properties as foundational to ARK’s model. While the $2.4 million target represents the upper band, ARK has previously outlined a range starting in the low six figures, with a $1.5 million milestone for 2027.

Wood’s forecasts are based partly on modeling Bitcoin as a reserve asset replacing allocations to gold and specific sovereign debt instruments, contingent on accelerating institutional flows.

Financial advisor Ric Edelman, whose firm DACFP advocates for crypto education among fiduciaries, offered a comparatively moderate $500,000 target by 2030. Edelman framed the target within a 10-40% portfolio allocation to digital assets, positioning Bitcoin as a long-duration asset in a world of declining fiat confidence. While his range is narrower than Wood’s, it is similarly predicated on rising institutional allocation and constrained supply mechanics.

MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor, a persistent advocate for institutional Bitcoin exposure, reaffirmed his long-held belief that passive capital reallocations alone could drive Bitcoin past $1 million. This month, Saylor emphasized the scale of allocators entering ETF channels, which he characterized as irreversible demand flows. This view treats Bitcoin as an apex monetary asset attracting capital in flight from inflation-hedging instruments.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink provided a looser band, offering a projected price window between $500,000 and $700,000 without anchoring to a specific timeframe. Fink’s comments align with BlackRock’s positioning in the ETF market and reflect confidence in regulatory clarity and institutional integration. Fink’s range assumes gradual accumulation of Bitcoin as a treasury or reserve asset, enabled by frictionless financial products.

Bank-led projections have trended toward shorter-term outlooks. Standard Chartered’s head of FX and digital assets, Geoff Kendrick, issued a target of $200,000 by the end of 2025. The thesis is grounded in ETF flow momentum, halving forces, and macro hedge demand. Similarly, Bernstein analysts raised their 2025 target to $200,000, citing robust ETF inflows. Both forecasts anchor to post-ETF regime trends and treat 2024’s halving as a catalyst rather than a lagging event.

On the more extreme end, Fidelity last year projected a $1 billion valuation per coin by 2038. This extreme target is grounded in network adoption curve analogies, positioning Bitcoin as a potential base-layer financial system and framing the projection as a function of exponential adoption and monetary network effects. The $1 billion thesis reflects a far-end macro transformation scenario rather than a cyclical valuation.

Despite stark differences in scale and timing, the shared denominator across all forecasts is the institutional reframing of Bitcoin’s role in diversified portfolios. Whether as a long-term hedge, macro reserve, or internet-native monetary base, the narrative shaping forward price targets continues to be dominated by capital flow models and network entrenchment rather than retail speculation or hype cycles.

Each projection reflects a different hypothesis on monetary reconfiguration, and none are immune to regime shifts in regulation, macro policy, or technology. Still, the volume and intensity of public institutional forecasts reflect an increasingly codified role for Bitcoin within long-term capital frameworks.

* Does not include $1 billion Hyperbitcoinization target from Fidelity.

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The data was compiled and published by the Russian media outlet RBC, and shows that BitRiver and Intelion alone have cornered over 50% of the market.

Intelion’s growth rate was also notable, with the firm increasing its revenues by RUB 3,948 million ($50,000) compared to 2023 figures.

BitRiver, Intelion Continue to Dominate Russian Market

The media outlet used the country’s top 10 crypto miners’ latest public declarations to compile its data.

This means that the nation’s vast illegal crypto mining sector is still largely unaccounted for. But the data also revealed how much power the country’s top crypto mining players use.

It also reveals information about where the miners have built their biggest data centers and the types of energy mixes they use to power their rigs.

The data shows that BitRiver’s revenue for 2024 was RUB 10.286 billion (over $129 million). The same company used 533 MW of electrical power in 15 data centers.

BitRiver operates more than 175,000 crypto mining rigs and provides hosting and support to B2B clients.

The firm continues to operate centers in Irkutsk Oblast, the nation’s first Bitcoin mining hub. In recent months, mining in Irkutsk has caused major strains on the Siberian grid.

BitRiver also has centers in Krasnoyarsk, Orenburg, Tuva, Buryatia, Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, and the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.

The data also shows that BitRiver is looking at alternatives to conventional power grid-based solutions.

More than 30 MW of its capacity now comes from associated gas extracted at oil drilling sites fitted with turbine generators.

Nuclear Power

Intelion, meanwhile, posted total revenues of RUB 6.218 billion ($78 million) in FY2024, using 298 MW of energy.

The company has built many of its centers outside the more typical BTC mining hubs, operating in the Tula, Nizhny Novgorod, Kemerovo, Samara, and Murmansk regions, as well as the Republic of Khakassia.

Intelion has also partnered with nuclear power providers such as Rosenergoatom, and has a center near the Kalinin Nuclear Power plant in Tver.

The firm has also expanded its gas generation operations and is now working on providing crypto mining hardware for industrial enterprises that have idle power capacities.

The media outlet compiled a top 10 of Russian industrial miners by revenue. Nine of the firms on the list saw revenue growth in FY2024, with Intelion leading in this category.

Smaller Players Also Posting Rapid Growth Rates

Several smaller firms also saw revenues climb last financial year. The most notable of these was third-paced Promminer, with revenues of RUB 4.761 billion ($59.8 million) and a capacity of 90 MW.

Unlike the “big two,” Promminer specializes in mobile data centers, which can be moved around the country as needed.

RBC noted that banks and leasing companies have shown an interest in financing the firm’s activities.

Earlier this year, Promminer announced it had brought a new data center online in the city of Voronezh.

Making up the rest of the list were Location (80 MW), R7miner (33 MW), Stella (120 MW), Mining Cluster (70 MW), CryptoReactor (75 MW), GIS Mining (53 MW), and BitCluster (80 MW).

The latter has revealed that it is developing crypto mining infrastructure in Ethiopia and Paraguay.

Sergey Bezdelov, the Director of the Industrial Mining Association, noted that Russia now “ranks second in the world in terms of mining volume, and first in terms of growth rates.”

The post Russian Crypto Mining Giants BitRiver, Intelion Post Combined $200M Revenue for FY2024 appeared first on Cryptonews.

What just happened? The European Commission has just hit Apple and Meta with combined fines of almost $1 billion. It marks the first fines handed out by the Commission under its Digital Markets Act (DMA), and arrives just after President Trump threatened to levy tariffs against any countries that penalize US companies.

Apple was handed the larger fine of 500 million euros ($570 million), while Meta has to pay 200 million euros ($228 million), making a combined total of 700 million euros, or $797 million.

In addition to its $570 million fine, Apple has been slapped with a cease-and-desist order requiring it to make further product changes by June. If it fails to comply with this order, the Commission can fine it for every additional day it refuses to cooperate.

The penalties come after a year-long investigation in which the Commission found that Meta forced Facebook and Instagram users to either pay a subscription fee to avoid ads or consent to their personal data being used for targeted advertising.

In response to the Commission’s findings, Meta has modified its ad approach in the EU, now offering unpaid users a version of the platforms with fewer unskippable, full-screen personalized ads. However, in a compliance report published on March 6, the company argued that it has “continued to receive additional demands that go beyond what is written in the law,” despite taking steps to align with the DMA. The Commission is currently examining this model to determine if it complies with the rules.

Apple, meanwhile, broke the DMA’s steering rule. This requires gatekeepers – Apple, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, ByteDance, and Microsoft – to allow business users (like app developers or online sellers) to steer customers to offers or alternative distribution channels outside the gatekeeper’s platform, without penalties or restrictions.

There was some good news for the companies. The Commission has also closed an investigation into Apple’s compliance with the DMA’s rules on browsers and default apps following changes that it introduced. Moreover, Facebook’s Marketplace will no longer be designated as a regulated service, so it will no longer fall under the DMA’s remit.

An Apple representative said it will appeal the decision, which it called “yet another example of the European Commission unfairly targeting” the company and forcing it to “give away (its) technology for free.”

“We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for. Despite countless meetings, the Commission continues to move the goal posts every step of the way,” the representative said.

Meta said it also plans to appeal the ruling.

“The European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards,” said Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer. “This isn’t just about a fine; the Commission forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multi-billion-dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service. And by unfairly restricting personalized advertising the European Commission is also hurting European businesses and economies.”

Apple and Meta must pay the fines within 60 days or risk further financial penalties. Under its rules, the Commission could have fined Meta up to $16 billion and Apple $39 billion based on their earnings last year.

The amount of Bitcoin (BTC) held by public corporations reached 592,112 BTC in 2024, according to Bitcoin Treasuries data.

Bitwise head of research Ryan Rasmussen highlighted that the number is twice as much Bitcoin as institutions accumulated in the previous five years combined.

History of accumulation

On Jan. 1, 2024, the amount of Bitcoin held by publicly listed companies was 272,777 BTC.

Two significant accumulation leaps were registered in 2020 and 2021. During the first year of the COVID pandemic, institutions inched close to a 100,000 BTC stash. This increased significantly the following year, as the corporate-held amount surpassed 200,000 BTC.

However, the momentum was temporarily interrupted as publicly listed companies realized part of their Bitcoin stash, almost losing the 200,000 BTC threshold. The accumulation movement resumed in 2023 and sharply increased last year.

Notably, Rasmussen pointed out that the amount would be “significantly smaller” if Strategy’s stash were excluded. The company, led by Michael Saylor, has over 499,000 BTC in its treasury as of March after adding 257,095 BTC last year via 16 buys.

Rasmussen added that public companies held $52 billion worth of Bitcoin as of March 6, equivalent to 3% of the flagship crypto’s total supply. 

An overall leap

The amount of Bitcoin held by various institutional investors also saw significant growth in 2024. 

According to Bitcoin Treasuries, private companies, exchange-traded products (ETP) managers, governments, and publicly listed firms held 2,802,135 BTC as of Dec. 31, 2024, compared to 1,622,439 BTC at the start of last year.

This jump is mainly attributed to governments and ETP managers. Governments started last year with 90,379 BTC in their vaults, with the stash growing to 513,791 BTC by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin held by asset managers climbed to 1,289,031 BTC from 771,013 BTC over the same period, while private companies shed their holdings from 488,270 BTC on Jan. 1, 2024 to 407,201 BTC by the end of last year.

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Somnia, a high-speed Layer 1 blockchain built for on-chain consumer applications, recently announced that it will benefit from up to $270 million combined capital from Improbable and MSquared (M²). This development arrives at a crucial moment, with Somnia ready to launch its testnet and demonstrate its potential for mainstream Web3 adoption.

Somnia Devnet Performance

During its Devnet phase, Somnia set some serious performance milestones. The platform recorded 1.05 million ERC-20 token transfers per second and managed 300,000 NFT mints per second at around 100 milliseconds per block.

The Devnet also handled 50,000 Uniswap trades per second. To simulate realistic conditions, Somnia leveraged 100,000 user accounts for these trades, highlighting how the technology can handle large-scale applications.

Source Somnia

Improbable’s Backing Reflects Confidence

Improbable’s venture builder investment in Somnia shows real confidence in the Somnia blockchain and its ability to bring Web3 to more people, including the huge potential to power real-time, scalable onchain games.

Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable, believes the future of digital economies hinges on infrastructure that can handle real-world scale.

According to Narula, “The future of digital economies depends on infrastructure that can handle real-world scale – far beyond what most blockchains today can achieve. We’ve spent over a decade solving complex distributed systems challenges, and that expertise is what gives the Somnia blockchain its spark. This is a gigachain we’re building, for speed, efficiency, and real utility, and we’re fully committed to supporting the ecosystem that will bring it to life.”

Paul Thomas, Founder of the Virtual Society Foundation, also expressed his thoughts following the Devnet results, saying, “The performance of the Devnet gives us great confidence in what’s ahead for Somnia. We’re refining our grant program and have several partnerships in the works to further strengthen the ecosystem.”

Multi-Stream Consensus for Sub-Second Finality

MSquared (M²) has also announced plans to integrate Somnia’s blockchain into its network of metaverses. This move could position Somnia as the backbone for real-time, on-chain interactions in immersive virtual worlds.

One of the big reasons Somnia stands out is its multi-stream consensus mechanism, which aims to bring lightning-fast block finality (over 1,000,000 transactions per second) to an environment already compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

This approach helps keep latency to a minimum and transaction costs way down—crucial factors for developers looking to build consumer-focused applications.