Arkham Exchange shutdown shows harsh reality for small crypto venues

Arkham Intelligence will shutter its crypto exchange after months of weak volume and fierce competition from major trading venues.

Arkham Intelligence is preparing to shut down its crypto trading venue, Arkham Exchange, after less than a year of live operations, underscoring how brutal today’s market is for upstart platforms without deep liquidity or clear differentiation.

Arkham’s short-lived exchange experiment

Arkham plans to wind down its exchange business “due to insufficient trading volume,” according to sources cited in a post by on‑chain analytics outlet Wu Blockchain. The platform, initially pitched as a crypto derivatives venue, was first announced in October 2024, with the company touting a move into perpetuals and other leveraged products. By early 2025, Arkham Exchange had rolled out spot trading in several U.S. states and shipped a mobile app in December.

Despite that build‑out, activity remained anemic. Over the past 24 hours the exchange “recorded trading volume of about $620k,” Wu Blockchain noted, a level that leaves market‑making and fee economics fundamentally unworkable in an environment where leading venues routinely clear tens of billions per day.

Community reaction and business model tension

Reaction from Bitcoin hardliners was unsparing. “They would be better just buying and holding bitcoin,” one user wrote in reply, adding that “everyone wants to be an exchange, custodian, or facilitator of bitcoin but so few actually want to buy it themselves.” That sentiment cuts to the core of Arkham’s pivot: a data‑analytics firm, backed by high‑profile investors, trying to bolt an order book onto an existing intel business rather than owning the underlying asset flow.

Arkham’s move into derivatives had been framed as a way to capture institutional order flow, similar to other recent launches such as its perpetuals exchange rollout in late 2024. Instead, the shutdown illustrates how exchange fragmentation, rising compliance costs, and more conservative risk budgets post‑2022 have made it far harder for mid‑tier venues to reach critical mass. Comparable efforts across the sector have struggled as well, with multiple perpetuals platforms quietly shelving expansion plans amid thin books and volatile fee revenue.

Market backdrop and key prices

The retrenchment comes against a choppy broader backdrop for digital assets, with crypto still trading as a high‑beta proxy on global risk sentiment. Bitcoin (BTC) is hovering around $66,988, with a 24‑hour range between roughly $66,558 and $69,994, as spot volumes gravitate toward large offshore venues. Ethereum (ETH) changes hands near $1,950, down roughly 3% on the session, while Solana (SOL) trades around $208, up just over 5% over the last 24 hours as liquidity rotates into high‑momentum layer‑1 names.

This parabolic move comes as digital assets continue to trade as the purest expression of macro risk appetite. Bitcoin (BTC) is hovering around $66,988, with a 24‑hour high near $69,994 and a low near $66,558, on robust spot and derivatives flows. Ethereum (ETH) changes hands close to $1,950, with deep liquidity across major venues and a 24‑hour pullback tracking broader altcoin weakness. Solana (SOL) trades around $208, up about 5% over the last 24 hours, with nearly double‑digit weekly gains as traders continue to rotate into higher‑beta names.

Relevant prior coverage on Arkham’s derivatives ambitions and the competitive landscape can be found via Bloomberg’s profile of Arkham’s exchange push, BeInCrypto’s report on its perpetuals launch, and TradingView’s summary of its derivatives rollout for professional traders.