CEX Perpetual Futures Volume Falls to $4T, Lowest Since Late 2023

Crypto perpetual futures trading volume on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges (CEXs) fell to $4 trillion in July, marking a 31-month low last seen in December 2023.

Binance led CEXs with $1.4 trillion in monthly perpetual futures volume, followed by OKX with $607 billion and Bybit with $300 billion, analytics platform CryptoRank said in a Friday X post.

Perpetual futures volumes briefly recovered between April and June before declining across all major venues in July.

The 31-month low in perpetual futures activity came as daily spot crypto trading volume fell 23.6% between July 1 and July 31, from $17.8 billion to $13.6 billion, according to analytics provider Coinglass.

Source: CryptoRank

Perps volume on DEXs nears one-year low

Perpetual trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) fell to $531 billion in July, the lowest level since June 2025 and a 21% decline from the $676 billion seen in June 2026, according to data aggregator DefiLlama.

Perpetuals trading volume on decentralized exchanges. Source: DefiLlama

Perps trading volume on DEXs has trended lower since the $1.36 trillion seen in October 2025.

Open interest on DEXs has also fallen to $17.9 billion in July from a peak of $19.4 billion in September 2025. Open interest measures the total value of active, unsettled contracts and can indicate whether new capital is entering or exiting the market.

Related: Hyperliquid RWA contracts grow to 32% of trading activity in Q2

Hyperliquid was the leading DEX with $199 billion in reported trading volume over the past 30 days. A growing share of Hyperliquid’s trading volume has come from tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), which accounted for 32% of Hyperliquid’s second-quarter trading activity, generating 6.6% of the protocol’s $169 million quarterly revenue. 

Tokenized assets became Hyperliquid’s largest trading category for the first time last month, with RWAs accounting for 52% of its total weekly trading volume between July 13 and July 19.

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