Trades worth hundreds of millions of dollars are decided upon over the phone or through a Bloomberg chat message in a glass, unremarkable building in lower Manhattan. There is no public order book. No screen ticker scrolling.
There are just two organizations, a price that has been negotiated, and a settlement that takes place discreetly, effectively, and without anyone in the larger market being aware of it. This is the realm of over-the-counter cryptocurrency trading, and most people believe that this is the area of the market that is truly important right now.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Market Segment | Over-the-Counter (OTC) Crypto Trading |
| 2024 OTC Volume Growth | 109% year-on-year surge, significantly outpacing centralized exchanges |
| Stablecoin Share of OTC Volume | 78% of total OTC volume in 2025, up from 26% two years prior |
| Stablecoin-Based Transaction Growth | 147% surge within OTC markets |
| Bitcoin ETF Milestone | US Bitcoin ETFs attracted more new money than gold ETFs following 2024 approvals |
| Key Institutional Participants | JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, DBS Bank, Standard Chartered |
| DBS Bank Options Volume | Over $1 billion in crypto options and structured products (H1 2025) |
| Reference Publication | Finery Markets OTC Report |
| Post-Election OTC Surge (Q4 2024) | 177% year-on-year increase in OTC trading volumes |
| October 2025 Stress Event | $20 billion in forced liquidations within 48 hours — OTC venues held firm |
| Institutional Share of Trading Volume | Rose from ~26% in 2023 to ~42% by late 2024 |
| Regulatory Frameworks Supporting Growth | EU MiCA, Singapore MAS guidelines, UAE VARA regulations |
For many years, the common perception of cryptocurrency trading was a young man crouched over three screens, watching real-time candlestick charts on Kraken or Binance. Although it depicts a progressively smaller portion of the situation, that image isn’t totally untrue. Institutional flow now accounts for more than 60% of the volume of cryptocurrency trading. Someone else is moving the price, but the retail trader is still present and keeping an eye on the charts.
The change wasn’t made overnight. It has been steadily increasing, picking up speed in 2023 and 2024, and by the time Bitcoin reached $100,000, it was hard to ignore. Pension funds, family offices, and registered investment advisers now have a familiar way to hold digital assets thanks to the US government’s approval of spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs.
Large institutions received the legal comfort they had been waiting for thanks to regulatory frameworks in Europe and Asia, including the EU’s MiCA regulation, Singapore’s generally welcoming attitude, and the UAE’s structured licensing environment. The change was not brought about by any one of these factors alone. They made it inevitable together.
However, the fact that institutions entered the market is not noteworthy. Once they arrived, that’s how they decided to trade. Public exchanges are not used by large players in the same manner as by retail traders. They are unable to. Slippage is the term used by traders to describe the phenomenon where a $200 million buy order in a public order book moves the price before it even executes. This slippage has a real cost for a fund that manages billions of dollars.
Rather, they become private. They negotiate over the phone or by logging into a platform that puts them in direct contact with a liquidity provider. The trade takes place. The market hardly flinches.
OTC desks were always intended to do this, but the surrounding infrastructure has undergone significant change. A far more advanced model has taken the place of the previous one, which involved a broker, a spreadsheet, and a handshake. These days, platforms provide integrated custody solutions, algorithmic execution strategies, real-time risk monitoring, and smart order routing across several liquidity pools through a single interface.
With the use of sophisticated algorithms intended to reduce market impact, JPMorgan and Fidelity have extended their digital asset desks to manage trades worth billions of dollars. Five years ago, Goldman Sachs’ recent interbank cryptocurrency options trade with DBS in Asia would have been practically unimaginable. The term “OTC 2.0,” coined by some in the industry, is accurate.
This is supported by the numbers in ways that are difficult to ignore. Finery Markets data shows that OTC spot trading volume increased 109% year over year, greatly surpassing growth at centralized exchanges. That disparity is instructive. It implies that the new money entering the cryptocurrency space is purposefully avoiding public venues because they are the incorrect tool for the job rather than because those venues are flawed.
There is a perception that while real capital allocation—the kind that drives markets—occurs elsewhere, in private, public exchanges are increasingly serving as venues for price discovery and retail activity.
What transpired in October 2025 may be the best example of this. Within 48 hours of a significant stablecoin depegging event, the cryptocurrency market saw forced liquidations totaling about $20 billion. Exchanges in the public sector faltered. fragmented liquidity. In previous years, the collateral re-pricing chain reaction could have sent the market into a multi-month spiral.
Meanwhile, OTC venues continued to operate. By using bilateral negotiations and private liquidity pools to absorb the stress, they were able to execute big trades without sending out distress signals to the larger market. The damage might have been much worse in the absence of that silent stabilizing function.
In a way that probably doesn’t receive enough attention, stablecoins are at the center of all of this. They now make up 78% of all OTC sales, compared to just 26% two years ago. It’s not a slow evolution. It’s a structural change. Stablecoins aren’t being used by institutions because they think digital currency is intriguing from a philosophical standpoint.
Because of their effectiveness—quick settlement, round-the-clock accessibility, and lack of exposure to the price volatility that makes raw Bitcoin a challenging cash management tool—they are being used. It becomes challenging to maintain that stablecoin is still a niche financial experiment when transaction volumes surpass those of some major payment networks in terms of value transferred.
While the majority of the commentary continued to center on price, the overall picture that emerges is one of a market that has quietly grown up. The emotional rhythm of cryptocurrency was defined by the four-year halving cycles of Bitcoin: retail euphoria, institutional skepticism, crash, repeat. Steady programmatic inflows from corporate treasuries, ETFs, and sovereign wealth funds that don’t trade on sentiment are currently breaking that cycle.
Allocation mandates are used for trading. This alters the market’s character in ways that are still developing, and it’s still unclear if the subsequent decline in volatility is long-term or merely a brief lull before the previous patterns resurface.
Observing all of this, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that the infrastructure discreetly constructed in OTC desks and private trading rooms has accomplished what the more visible segments of the cryptocurrency industry spent years attempting to do: it has made digital assets truly usable for the world’s biggest capital pools. Not ostentatious. Not overly dramatic. Simply put, they are professional, practical, and becoming more and more essential to the actual flow of global liquidity.