Altcoins left behind
For altcoins, the picture is reversed. In CoinDesk Research’s basket of altcoins, dollar depth was greatest on Jan. 1, 2025, and has been lower on each date measured since.
Depth at 5% from the price is down about a third since the start of 2025, to around $2 million. Closer to the price, at 1%, it has fallen by about a sixth.
Measured in tokens, alt depth looks healthier: it peaked on Jan. 1 this year and has eased only modestly since. But analysts said that token-unit recovery was mostly due to falling prices, masking a steady erosion in committed capital.
Spot trading thins out
Spot trading has not recovered. Weekly spot volume on centralized exchanges averaged around $279 billion over the four weeks to Sept. 27, according to CoinDesk Research, nearly two-thirds below the $801 billion traded in the week of the crash.
Activity bottomed out in August, when weekly volume fell to around…
