Crypto analytics platform Glassnode is saying Bitcoin (BTC) has proven its resilience after a massive stash of the flagship digital asset was sold off last weekend.

Glassnode says an unnamed investor disposed of Bitcoin worth nearly $10 billion via Galaxy Digital last weekend, demonstrating Bitcoin’s “growing liquidity profile and market depth.”

“This liquidity was put to the test over the weekend, as an early Bitcoin investor, via Galaxy Digital’s services, distributed 80,000 BTC (approximately $9.6 billion), likely through a mix of market sales and [over-the-counter] OTC transactions. The resulting sell-side pressure drove the price down to $115,000 before stabilizing at $119,000.

This episode illustrates Bitcoin’s ability to absorb large sell-side volumes, even during typically thinner weekend trading hours, reinforcing the market’s structural robustness.”

The analytics platform says that a “super-majority” of Bitcoin holders are currently sitting on significant unrealized profits, with more than 97% of the circulating supply in the black.

“This underscores how the majority of investors are sitting on substantial paper gains, and sets up an environment of potential future sell-side pressure should prices continue to rise further.”

According to Glassnode, profit-taking could “sharply intensify” if Bitcoin goes up by around 20% from the current level.

“…Bitcoin may remain range-bound between $105,000 and $125,000 until a decisive breakout occurs. Should the market break convincingly higher, the $141,000 region is likely to present the next major zone of resistance where sell-side pressure may intensify rapidly…”

Bitcoin is trading at $117,651 at time of writing.

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The Senate Banking Committee released a seven-point framework for digital asset market structure and heard testimony urging Congress to translate those principles into statute without delay on June 23.

Committee Chair Tim Scott and Senators Cynthia Lummis, Thom Tillis, and Bill Hagerty set out a plan that draws a statutory line between digital asset securities and commodities. However, there is no draft of a bill as of press time.

Furthermore, the plan allocates jurisdiction to existing regulators instead of creating a single crypto agency while updating registration paths so compliant issuers can raise capital under an exemption tailored to distributed-ledger projects. 

The document also calls for rules that preserve self-custody, recognize the difference between centralized firms and decentralized protocols, and treat tokenization as an efficiency upgrade rather than a novel financial product.

Hearing on bipartisan regulatory effort

Witnesses at the Digital Assets Subcommittee hearing agreed that Congress needs to create a framework that clarifies regulations and classifications for the industry.

Ryan VanGrack, Coinbase’s vice president of legal, told lawmakers:

“More than 52 million Americans, one in five adults, now own digital assets.”

VanGrack said that the current ambiguity in rules leads to loopholes and gaps that are exploitable by bad actors. Former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chair Rostin Behnam, now a Georgetown fellow, echoed the sentiment and added that the non-security segment “still lacks a market structure regime.”

Both described a traditional hierarchy of customer, broker, exchange, clearinghouse, and custodian that can migrate to crypto with minimal change.

Greg Xethalis, general counsel at Multicoin Capital, warned that unclear guidance pushes founders and capital overseas and forces US start-ups to “get a law-firm opinion to launch” even simple projects. 

Sarah Hammer of the Wharton School pointed to Singapore’s licensing model and strict anti-fraud standards as proof that clear obligations can coexist with innovation.

Consumer safeguards and regulatory coordination

The principles sheet proposes innovation-friendly registration for intermediaries, right-sized capital and segregation rules, and explicit bankruptcy protection for customer assets. Behnam called segregation the “number-one issue” for user protection. 

The senators also endorsed a targeted anti-money laundering package that extends the Bank Secrecy Act and IEEPA tools to offshore entities that interact with US users, mirroring points raised by Hammer on the need to deter fraud without stifling compliant activity.

For federal agencies, the plan recommends safe-harbor pilots, no-action letters, and inter-agency coordination to avoid duplicative exams. The language echoes VanGrack’s view that the United States can “do better” than a patchwork of enforcement actions. 

Senator Hagerty cited last week’s 51-23 GENIUS Act vote as evidence that bipartisan momentum exists. Lummis, who co-sponsors a comprehensive bill with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, urged colleagues to keep that bipartisan channel open despite political friction.

Committee members also pressed witnesses on practical benefits. Xethalis argued that decisive legislation would prevent Europe from setting global norms, as occurred with internet commerce rules, and would forestall a replay of the lag in 5G and semiconductor leadership. 

Senator Angela Alsobrooks inquired about tangible benefits for households. Speakers highlighted lower settlement costs, faster remittances, and new credit rails.

Path to draft text

Staff will now translate the principles into statutory language that assigns the Securities and Exchange Commission authority over asset fundraising and the secondary trading of securities tokens. At the same time, the CFTC would supervise commodity tokens and derivative products. 

Lawmakers indicated that customer asset segregation, capital requirements scaled to risk, and a tailored exemption for token sales will form the foundation of the draft.

The next step is to finalize a market structure law, which would join a similar proposal introduced by House Republicans on May 5.

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Salon predicts Elon “Pedo Guy” Musk’s house of cards is about to tumble.

Tesla is ridiculously overvalued for a carmaker, especially one with severe brand problems and an inability to sell cars. The hype has been around Elon, and as Elon has done more than enough to disprove his mythical genius, there isn’t a lot left propping the stock up. Sadly, his friendship with a man famous for throwing people under the bus has resulted in the anticipated result. While Musk is wearing shades, the future is not so bright.

While the smoke clears on the launchpad, another crisis is burning: xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence venture, is reportedly on track to lose $13 billion in 2025. According to multiple reports, it’s burning through $1 billion every month, and bringing in barely a half-billion total. Musk moved GPUs from Tesla to prop it up and is now pitching a $9 billion raise to investors. But that’s not innovation — it’s triage.

And now, the political theater collapses too. After years of courting Donald Trump and MAGA-adjacent culture warriors, Musk has been frozen out by Trump himself, who reportedly isn’t taking Musk’s calls. No more backstage passes. No more power dinners. Just a guy with exploding rockets, a hemorrhaging AI startup, and a dying social media platform full of trolls yelling into the void.

Salon

Previously:
• Elon Musk made fool of by Assassin’s Creed social media team
• Elon Musk buys Twitter… again, from himself
• Trump Administration shilling for Elon Musk
• Trump official confirms what we knew: Elon Musk is painfully unfunny

Crypto exchanges Coinbase and Gemini are close to securing regulatory approvals granting them access to operate across the EU, Reuters reported on June 16, citing people familiar with the matter.

According to the report, the expectation has intensified tensions among national regulators over the speed and oversight of new licensing under the bloc’s landmark crypto framework.

The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, in force since early this year, allows any member state to issue a license that unlocks the entire 27-nation market.

While hailed as a step toward aligning crypto oversight with traditional finance, some regulators privately warn that inconsistent enforcement risks creating regulatory blind spots for an industry valued at roughly $3.3 trillion.

Gemini looks for Malta approval

According to two sources, Gemini is close to receiving approval from Malta, which has already signed off on OKX and Crypto.com licenses within weeks of MiCA’s rollout. The country argues its quicker process stems from years of experience supervising crypto businesses.

A spokesperson for the Malta Financial Services Authority told the newswire that four crypto licenses have been issued to date, adding that stringent money-laundering checks remain in place.

Meanwhile, one source revealed that the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has examined Malta’s licensing procedures and is preparing an internal report.

ESMA declined to comment on the matter.

France’s financial markets regulator has publicly cautioned that ESMA’s lack of direct licensing power could spark a “race to the bottom,” as countries compete to attract lucrative crypto business.

Coinbase eyes Luxembourg license

Luxembourg is also expected to grant a license to Coinbase, marking the first approval for a US-listed crypto firm under MiCA.

Coinbase, now part of the S&P 500, employs around 200 staff across Europe and plans to expand its Luxembourg office by more than 20 people this year, a company spokesperson said.

Luxembourg’s financial supervisor did not comment on the pending application, but one official familiar with the matter rejected suggestions that the country’s standards were too lenient, arguing some critics are motivated by competition to lure crypto firms elsewhere.

The EU’s internal split over licensing comes as lawmakers debate expanding ESMA’s authority to ensure consistent enforcement of MiCA rules amid the risks posed by the US deregulating the industry.

While Brussels sets regulatory frameworks, national agencies retain licensing power, a system now under pressure in one of the world’s fastest-moving financial sectors.

The outcome of these approvals could shape how Europe balances investor safeguards with ambitions to be a global crypto hub, as memories of past industry scandals, such as FTX’s 2022 collapse, still loom large over regulators’ efforts to keep pace with innovation.

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Centralized exchanges are dominated by a few big players, with Binance far outpacing all others in trading volume.

With around $17 billion in 24-hour volume recorded on March 25, Binance’s trading volume is an order of magnitude higher than any other exchange. Binance offers roughly 1,868 markets (479 coins) and captures an outsized share of global trading (routinely 50%+ of all crypto spot volume).

Coinbase recorded $2.8 billion in volume in the past 24 hours, with 431 markets and 289 coins listed. While Coinbase’s volume is large, it is roughly one-sixth of Binance. The US exchange benefits from fiat on-ramps and institutional clientele but has a smaller global user base.

OKX and Bybit both saw $2.5 billion in trading volume, while Bitget and MEXC recorded around $2.20 billion each. In aggregate, the top 10 CEXs account for the vast majority of crypto trading, with Binance alone constituting anywhere between 34% and 60% of total spot volume on any given day.

CEXs as a group list thousands of markets, but their listing strategies often differ significantly. Exchanges like Gate.io and MEXC list more than 4,000 markets each, far more than major regulated exchanges.

These exchanges tap into the long tail of digital assets, which can boost reported volume (as active traders speculate on many small tokens). In contrast, an exchange like Coinbase offers under 500 pairs and focuses on quality and liquidity. Binance (~1,868 markets) strikes a balance – it lists many coins (including new project launches) but also concentrates volume in a few top pairs (BTC/USDT, etc.).

Generally, having more markets can attract niche trading activity. However, the majority of volume on CEXs still comes from a handful of top pairs (BTC, ETH, and popular altcoins like Solana and XRP against USDT or fiat).

DEXs

Decentralized exchanges have grown tremendously since 2020. Today’s DEX landscape spans multiple chains and trading models (AMMs, aggregators, order book DEXs). The top 10 DEXs by daily volume currently include Ethereum-based exchanges and others on alternative Layer-1s and Layer-2s.

Stabble saw the highest trading volume on March 25 — just over $6 billion. The Solana-based stablecoin DEX/aggregator is focused on low-slippage stablecoin swaps. Its volume is highly concentrated in USDT/USDC trades, which alone accounted for roughly $4.7 billion of its volume.

This massive stablecoin swapping activity gave Stabble over 50% of all DEX volume on the days it peaked. The platform’s novel liquidity design (claiming to use 97% less liquidity to achieve the same depth and integration with Solana’s ecosystem (Serum/Jupiter aggregators) likely contributed to its high volume.

Uniswap v3 saw $600 million to $700 million in 24-hour volume on March 25. The DEX is the flagship AMM on Ethereum, known for its concentrated liquidity pools. It supports roughly 909 trading pairs on the mainnet, ranging from major WETH-stablecoin pools to countless ERC20 token pairs.

Uniswap v3 on Ethereum typically has the largest market share of DEX volume on Ethereum and has long been the dominant DEX by brand, though its share is now split across multiple deployments (Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, etc.).

Why CEXs lead

Unlike CEXs, liquidity on DEXs is spread across many chains. Even the largest DEX (Uniswap across all networks) typically handles under $1B/day on-chain, significantly lower than top CEX volumes. On average, total DEX spot volume is roughly 10–15% of total CEX volume. For example, in early 2024, DEXs collectively reached roughly 20% of centralized exchange volume — an all-time high ratio.

This is a big leap from 2022, when DEXs were only around 3% to 5% of the market by volume. Still, no single DEX comes close to Binance’s volume. Uniswap (all versions combined) often does $1 billion to $1.5 billion in daily volume, which can rival or exceed a mid-tier CEX like Kraken or KuCoin but is only a fraction of Binance.

We occasionally see DEX vs. CEX convergence on specific days — for instance, during the DeFi Summer 2020 boom, Uniswap’s daily volume surpassed Coinbase’s for the first time. In March 2025, PancakeSwap’s multi-chain volumes briefly overtook Uniswap, hitting around $1.4 billion in 24 hours versus Uniswap’s $674 million and $14.9 billion vs. $8.3 billion over one week. These moments are notable but not the norm; generally, the top CEXs still handle 5x to 10× the volume of the top DEXs.

One advantage of DEXs is open listing — anyone can provide liquidity for any token pair, so the number of markets is theoretically unlimited. In practice, Uniswap (v3) Ethereum has roughly 900 active pairs, but if you include all long-tail ERC20 pairs ever created, Uniswap v2 and v3 count thousands of markets.

Aggregators like 1inch or Matcha can route across tens of thousands of token pairs permissionlessly. This means the variety of assets traded on DEXs is huge, often larger than any single CEX. However, market share on DEXs is more concentrated in the top pairs (typically stablecoin pairs and WETH/USDC, etc.), similar to CEXs.

CEXs have had a head start in building large user bases. Binance reportedly has over 100 million users, and Coinbase has over 70 million registered. These platforms offer easy access via web/mobile apps, fiat currency onboarding, and familiar interfaces (order books, charts) — lowering the barrier for retail traders.

DEXs, by contrast, require a web3 wallet and some blockchain know-how, which historically limited their audience to more crypto-savvy users. This is changing as wallets and UIs improve, but ease of use still favors CEXs. Moreover, many institutional and algorithmic traders operate on CEXs via API, benefiting from established infrastructure and customer support — whereas using a DEX involves new tooling (web3 wallets, on-chain execution, etc.).

This difference in user profile translates to volume: the sheer scale of Binance’s user base results in huge liquidity and constant trading activity. Even if DEXs offer competitive tech, they must consistently onboard more users to rival CEX volume.

Liquidity begets volume. Binance’s order books are extremely deep — tight bid/ask spreads and high volume at each price level — meaning a trader can execute a large trade with minimal slippage. In contrast, early DEXs had small liquidity pools that would move significantly even on moderate trades. This discouraged big traders from using DEXs.

However, for many top tokens, the slippage on a DEX trade is comparable to a CEX, especially on stablecoin pairs. Nonetheless, professional traders still prefer CEXs or OTC desks for very large orders. CEXs also aggregate global liquidity — a market order on Coinbase or Kraken pulls from all makers on that book, whereas a DEX trade typically hits one pool or aggregator route at a time. CEXs remain the go-to for high-frequency and very-large-volume trading, contributing to their higher overall volume.

CEXs and DEXs derive volume from how well they plug into the broader ecosystem. CEXs benefit from integrations with fintech and institutions — e.g., Coinbase volume is boosted by its linkage to institutional trading desks and its custody services; Binance volume comes not just from retail UI but also from brokers, API traders and its entire ecosystem (Trust Wallet, Binance Pay, etc., all funnel users into trading eventually).

DEXs, on the other hand, benefit from DeFi composability — a lot of DEX volume is driven by other smart contracts and protocols using them under the hood. For example, a DeFi lending protocol might liquidate collateral via Uniswap, or a yield optimizer might rebalance through Curve. These programmatic trades increase DEX volume without a “human trader” directly involved.

Additionally, wallets like MetaMask and Coinbase Wallet have swap features that route through DEX aggregators, bringing in retail users who might not even realize they’re using a DEX.

In summary, CEXs generally win on raw volume due to established trust, large user pools, and powerful trading features, whereas DEXs excel in asset variety, innovation, and permissionless access. The gap in volume is closing as DEX technology matures — with Layer-2 scalability, better liquidity, and more user-friendly interfaces, DEXs have eaten into the CEX lead.

We’ve observed structural shifts like the ones in 2020 and 2022 that gave DEXs permanent footholds in what used to be CEX territory. While it’s unlikely that DEXs will completely displace CEXs in the near term, the competitive pressure has also forced CEXs to innovate.

The post CEX dominance persists despite rapid growth in DEX volumes appeared first on CryptoSlate.