HOUSES OF EXCHANGE

At the date of publication of the study, the CoinMarketCap website registered 138 exchange bureaus, a number that now stands at 174.

Exchange houses dominate the sample selected for the study, both by the number of participating organizations and by the staff employed. The differences in scale in this sector influence the behavior of organizations in this sector. 52% of small exchange houses have a government license to operate, while in large exchange houses that percentage is reduced to 35%, says the study.

Europe, as seen in the graph on the left, is the region with the most exchange houses, (37%) followed by Asia-Pacific (27%). Latin America reaches fourth place with 14%, behind North America.

In terms of security measures, the use of external security providers is present in 80% of large exchange houses and in 69% of small ones. The frequency of security audits also varies among exchange houses; the larger ones perform more audits systematically than the smaller ones.

73% of exchange houses control users' funds as they control private keys, while users control those keys in 13% of those organizations.

In terms of the volume of transactions in the different currencies, the US dollar is the most used currency, followed by the euro and the pound sterling. The Chinese Yuan, which dominated significantly the commercial exchange of bitcoin from 2014 to 2016, decreased markedly earlier this year after the strict regulations imposed by the People's Bank in China.