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Trading of BLUR — the token associated with Blur, the NFT aggregator that has captured significant NFT volumes — commenced on February 14 at 6:30pm UTC, with the very first trade executed on Huobi at a price of $0.01. Despite the crypto market maturing, there are still arbitrage opportunities, especially immediately after a highly anticipated launch like BLUR.
Prices on Huobi and OKX, the first exchanges to begin trading, quickly surged above $8, with Huobi nearly hitting $10. Trading on the Uniswap V3 BLUR-USDC pair began at 6:33pm UTC at a price of $0.29. Coinbase entered the fray at 6:53pm at a price of $0.88. Prices did not fully converge until 7:30pm UTC, a full hour after trading began.
Notably, Binance has not yet opened BLUR trading, and as a result OKX has dominated CEX market share. When viewing hourly market share, it becomes clear that Coinbase and OKX are serving different markets. Coinbase’s market share has consistently surged more than 10% at 7pm UTC (2pm EST), the middle of U.S. trading hours. During these times, OKX’s market share has dipped as low as 35% while Kucoin’s, the second largest by volume, has remained more stable. It’s unclear if and when Binance will list BLUR, though it is likely that the exchange will quickly capture more than 50% of volumes, primarily siphoning from OKX, its top international competitor.
Meanwhile, market depth within 1% of the mid price grew steadily from February 14 to February 19. OKX began with the most liquidity, suggesting that market makers correctly anticipated that the majority of volume would go to the exchange. OKX’s average 1% market depth on the day after listing was over $315k, almost double Coinbase’s $185k. However, Coinbase’s has since surged to $450k while OKX stands at $300k, roughly equal to Bybit and Huobi, suggesting the same market maker(s) may be operating on these exchanges. As of this writing, OKX’s USDT pair has the lowest spread at just 13.5bps compared to 23bps on Coinbase.
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