In August, trading volumes on crypto exchanges broke out of the bearish phase. According to CryptoQuant, on August 21 spot trades reached the $75 billion mark, while the volume in the perpetual contracts market totaled $336 billion.
Analysts see in this rebound an earlier start to the bullish phase. The rise in volume coincided with a rally in Bitcoin, not with a wave of sell-offs.
Spot volume growth was not during the sell-off
On August 21, the market recorded the second-largest spot session since February. It halted the decline that had pushed trading volumes down to multi-year lows as liquidity on exchanges was falling. Binance processed trades of $19.4 billion, Coinbase — $8 billion, and Gate — $5.1 billion.
The main difference in the August surge is its direction. At the start of 2026, volumes were rising during sell-offs: this was driven by capital exiting the market, not by new buying.
This time, everything was different. Volumes grew alongside a rise in the Bitcoin price by 25%
BTC, as well as the surge in the quotes of other major coins and tokens. CryptoQuant sees this as real demand from buyers.
The growth turned out to be global. By August 25, spot volumes showed the sharpest rise in 2026 over a 30-day stretch. Gate metrics added 667%, Coinbase — 429%, OKX — 213%, and on Binance and smaller exchanges the figures rose by 157–163%.
Leverage has returned, but shorts dominate
Spot markets weren’t the only ones to surge—volumes on the perpetual futures market also jumped. They turned out to be much higher than spot volumes. For example, on August 21, the figures reached about $336 billion—the highest since March. The leaders were Binance ($124 billion), OKX ($46 billion), and MEXC ($30 billion).
In CryptoQuant, attention is drawn to an important detail: the main increase came from the closure of short positions. They were widely liquidated while the prices of digital assets were quickly rising.
The futures market accelerated significantly. Over the last 30 days, volumes jumped the most on August 24 and 25: on Binance — plus 202%, on Bybit — 184%. The fastest growth over 30 days right now is with OKX (407%), Coinbase (378%), and Gate (305%).
“An increase in volume may indicate that the bearish pullback has ended and the crypto market has entered an early phase of growth,” CryptoQuant said.
Since then, prices of major cryptocurrencies have fallen. For example, on September 14, Bitcoin traded at around $77,424 — noticeably lower than a year ago. The coming weeks will show what happened at the end of the summer. Was this the start of a shift in the global trend, or a one-off spike on inflated leverage?