Crypto Liquidity Cools: Stablecoins Drop $687M, DEX Volumes Slide, But Corporate BTC Buying Holds
The week of May 18–24, 2026 brought
29 stories mentioning it. Newest first.
The week of May 18–24, 2026 brought
direct competitor, pushing back on the narrative that DEXs are cannibalising centralised exchange user bases. Zhou said Bybit…framing matters for how the industry reads CEX-DEX dynamics
snapshot of seven perpetual DEX tokens launched over the past year paints a mostly bearish picture: five
real-time pricing — including lending markets, perpetual DEXs, and automated liquidation engines — are exposed to stale or missing
ticking higher. DefiLlama data tracking Tron's perp DEX and futures protocols shows the move is broad-based…existing volume reshuffling between protocols. Source: [Tron Perp DEX & Futures Volume - DefiLlama](https://defillama.com/perps/chain/tron)
real story is happening at the edges. Perp DEXs have grown their share of open interest from
regenerated all ZK circuits powering Lighter's perpetual DEX Layer 2 directly from source code, including both
chain perpetual DEXs have gone from a niche corner of crypto trading to a structural force in just…months. In April 2024, perp DEXs held a 2.9% share of total crypto trading volume; by April
Solana-based perpetual DEXs just posted a new all-time high in weekly trading volume, clearing $20 billion…derivatives stack. The surge puts Solana's perp DEX ecosystem firmly in the conversation alongside established centralized venues
advertising. The concern is structural. DeFi protocols and DEXs operate without a central intermediary, which has always made
slowed to $549 million for the week, and DEX spot and perpetuals volumes both pulled back after
interesting move, given that Osmosis is an established DEX layer in the Cosmos ecosystem rather than a newly
volume, holds 58.5% of all on-chain perp DEX open interest, and settles every trade with one-block
million to just $137 million, per DefiLlama. Daily DEX volume across the entire chain sits at $1.95 million
modest sum relative to daily DEX volume, the pattern of early wallets waking up is historically associated with
revenue. For Ethereum, the convergence signals that its DEX infrastructure, anchored by Uniswap and a maturing Layer
against similar attack vectors, while simultaneously rolling out DEX v2, a Solana DEX, fixed-rate borrowing, Liquidity
ecosystem rather than sitting on the sidelines. DEX spot volumes jumped 22.4% and perpetuals volumes surged 25.62%, suggesting
chain activity responded: DefiLlama recorded $152.9 million in DEX
both the base layer and its dominant DEX aggregator