Institutional crypto exchange Bullish broke into the top three centralized cryptocurrency exchanges by spot trading volume in February, surpassing Coinbase as overall trading activity across the sector cooled, according to CoinDesk Data’s latest Exchange Review.
Spot trading on Bullish surged during the month, rising 62.6% from January to reach $76 billion. The figure represents the platform’s strongest monthly performance since October 2025 and pushed its share of the global spot market to 5.06%, an increase of just over two percentage points.
The gain was enough to move Bullish — which went public on the New York Stock Exchange last year — ahead of Coinbase, whose spot market share stood at 4.59% for the month.
The shift in rankings occurred even as trading volumes across centralized exchanges declined. Total spot and derivatives trading dropped 2.41% in February to $5.61 trillion, marking the lowest combined activity since October 2024, according to the report.
One factor behind the slowdown was relatively muted price volatility in leading cryptocurrencies. Although markets experienced bouts of turbulence early and late in the month, Bitcoin spent much of February trading within a tight range between $60,000 and $70,000, reducing the speculative activity that often fuels higher exchange volumes.
Spot trading accounted for approximately $1.50 trillion of the total market activity, down 3.01% compared with January. Derivatives trading also edged lower, falling 2.41% to $4.11 trillion, though it continued to dominate the market, representing about 73% of all centralized exchange trading.
Meanwhile, Binance remained the industry’s largest platform by a wide margin. The exchange recorded around $331 billion in spot trading volume during February, equal to roughly 22% of global market share. Even so, its dominance slipped to the lowest monthly level since October 2020, suggesting trading activity is becoming more distributed across competing exchanges.
Bullish’s rise reflects shifting dynamics in the centralized exchange landscape as competition intensifies. Platforms are increasingly trying to attract traders through deeper liquidity, incentives and new product offerings. Some exchanges have also explored partnerships with major U.S. stock exchanges to introduce tokenized securities or have expanded into prediction market trading to capture new sources of activity.
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