BitMEX and BitMart announced they're shutting down three days apart. One of them invented the perpetual swap.
It might look like traders are leaving crypto. Not exactly…they're trading somewhere else.
Check out this data.
For three years, DEXs never held above $20 in spot volume for every
$100 traded on centralized exchanges. Every breakout snapped back.
For over a year now, they haven't dropped below it. Even spiked to $35 in June 2025, though most of that was one Binance integration routing through PancakeSwap.
DEXs haven't replaced centralized exchanges, and they probably won't.
It's because the biggest CEXs still have advantages that are hard to recreate onchain: fiat access, deep liquidity, regulatory reach and simple onboarding.
Binance, Coinbase, OKX and Bybit will stay the way most people enter crypto, exit it, and trade the deepest markets.
The people getting squeezed are the smaller centralized exchanges.
They're now competing against the largest CEXs on liquidity and trust, while competing against DEXs on self-custody, 24/7 markets and access to assets before they reach a centralized listing.
Their old edge was that they were easier and safer than using a DEX while still offering more opportunities than the largest exchanges. Both sides of that have weakened.
So crypto isn't moving from CEX to DEX in one clean jump. Instead, it's splitting.
How does this affect you? If your funds sit on an exchange that isn't top four or onchain, ask what its advantage is. Bc most of the time the risk isn't worth the reward.
Same goes for mid-tier exchange tokens. BMX dropped 66% in a day when the announcement hit.
The giant CEXs survive.
The strongest DEXs keep taking market share.
And there's going to be a lot of dead bodies between them.
