CommEX Estimates Earnings of Bitcoin Exchanges Serving Russian Traders

In Russia, there are approximately 6 million active cryptocurrency traders, with an average transaction volume of $8000 per month. This was stated by Anton Toroptsev, the regional director of the CommEX exchange in Russia and the CIS, during his speech at the Global Vision Summit in Moscow.

According to him, with an average commission ranging from 0.02% in the futures market to 0.1% in the spot market and an average monthly “check” of $8000 per trader, the total earnings of crypto exchanges working with users from Russia could reach $25 million per month or about 30 billion rubles annually.

This estimate was disputed by Evgenia Burova, marketing director of the Garantex crypto exchange. According to her calculations, the monthly turnover of cryptocurrencies in the Russian market on exchanges with KYC/AML procedures amounts to about 250 billion rubles.

Toroptsev predicted increased regulatory pressure on large centralized crypto exchanges and the fragmentation of the crypto market into regions.

“It is logical to assume that after Binance [American regulators will take an interest in] other large platforms. This is bad for end users, the market will shrink, and smaller platforms oriented towards specific regions will emerge,” he stated.

Some users may switch to DEX, but for now, they remain an unclear “raw product” for the mass audience, added the regional head of CommEX.

The Central Bank of Russia estimated the volume of bitcoin transactions in the second and third quarters of 2023 at 1.68 trillion rubles.

In January 2024, Russian users became leaders in the number of visits to the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit—accounting for 23% of the traffic. Russian activity was also noted on the platforms MEXC (19% of total traffic), Bitget (11%), and HTX (10%).