Which Exchange Has the Deepest Bitcoin Futures Order Book? TokenInsight's September 2026 Report Puts MEXC First Near the Mid Price

 

TokenInsight's September 2026 Crypto Exchange Liquidity Report puts MEXC's combined BTC and ETH futures depth at $21.03 million within the 0.03% band, the deepest among the nine exchanges surveyed. In the same report, MEXC's median slippage on a $500,000 BTC spot sell order was 0.005%, the lowest median in the report.

 

That conclusion carries a condition which belongs alongside it: it holds at the 0.03% band and nowhere else that has been disclosed. The 0.03% band equals three basis points, a window pressed right against the best available prices. Switch to the ±1% two-sided measure CoinGlass uses, meaning 100 basis points on each side and a window roughly 33 times wider, and MEXC does not appear in that firm's BTC futures depth table for the first half of 2026. That table lists five venues, Binance, OKX, Bybit, Bitget and Gate, with Binance at $236 million for a 44.0% share.

 

Setting the July and September reports side by side yields two further findings. The improvement is real and quantifiable: futures depth at the 0.03% band rose from $15.71 million to $21.03 million, a 33.9% gain, spot depth at 0.03% rose from $1.76 million to $3.58 million, a 103.4% gain, and both the median and P90 slippage on $1 million ETH futures sells fell by roughly 40% to 50%. The second finding is that the disclosure narrowed. July's release stated that MEXC ranked third at the 0.05% futures band and that its $0.91 million at the 0.01% spot band sat just below the sample leader's $0.92 million. September's release drops the 0.05% band entirely and describes the 0.01% spot band only as "about $1.35 million," tied with another exchange, giving no comparison figure.

 

This article lists every band by report month, figure and rank, covering where MEXC placed first and where it did not, explains why the band can determine the ranking, and gives a measured basis for choosing a band by order size.

 

 

 

MEXC's first place in the September report is combined BTC and ETH futures depth of $21.03 million at the 0.03% band, from a sample of nine exchanges. Its other first place is median slippage of 0.005% on a $500,000 BTC spot sell.

 

The band where September explicitly places MEXC second is spot 0.03%, at $3.58 million. The 0.01% spot band at about $1.35 million is described as tied with another exchange for deepest, with no comparison figure given.

 

July's report disclosed considerably more from the same nine-exchange sample. Futures 0.03% at $15.71 million ranked first, futures 0.05% at $20.83 million ranked third and within 2.1% of the leader, spot 0.01% at $0.91 million sat just under the leader's $0.92 million, and spot 0.03% at $1.76 million ranked third.

 

September's release does not disclose the 0.05% futures band. That is a measure July published and September omits.

 

One internal comparison confirms the depth genuinely improved. September's $21.03 million within the 0.03% band exceeds MEXC's own July figure of $20.83 million measured out to the wider 0.05% band, and depth at a wider band necessarily contains depth at a narrower one.

 

Under the ±1% measure, MEXC does not appear in CoinGlass's BTC futures depth table. It does appear in that firm's derivatives volume share table at 7.7%, fourth, and its average daily open interest table at 7.9%, also fourth.

 

The two firms' figures are not directly comparable. The bands differ by roughly 33 times, one covers BTC and ETH combined while the other covers BTC alone, and one is a single month against a six-month average.

 

 

The September report surveys nine major global exchanges, measuring order book depth, trading slippage and bid-ask spread across BTC and ETH in spot and futures markets, plus gold and silver futures. It names only MEXC; the other eight venues are unnamed.

 

Two metrics are described as first. Combined BTC and ETH futures depth within the 0.03% band came to $21.03 million, worded as the deepest among the nine exchanges surveyed. Median slippage on a $500,000 BTC spot sell order was 0.005%, worded as the lowest median slippage in the report.

 

Two further metrics are not first. The $3.58 million at the 0.03% spot band ranks second explicitly. The 0.01% spot band, at approximately $1.35 million, is described as tied with another exchange for first.

 

Several more carry only qualitative descriptions without a rank. Median and P90 slippage on $500,000 ETH futures sells were 0.003% and 0.007%, and on $1 million sells 0.008% and 0.013%, which the release calls among the best-performing results in the report without specifying a position. Median slippage of 0.002% on $300,000 silver futures sells was the lowest among all surveyed exchanges, while combined gold and silver futures depth of $2.39 million at the 0.01% band carries no ranking.

 

 

September's wording on the 0.01% spot band is approximately $1.35 million, tied with another exchange for the deepest spot liquidity in the report. That sentence carries two limitations. The figure itself is approximate, rounded rather than exact, and the exchange it ties with is unnamed with no figure given. The tie therefore cannot be checked externally.

 

July's treatment of the same measure provides a reference point. The wording then was that MEXC posted $0.91 million, nearly matching the sample leader at $0.92 million. In other words July was a second place by $0.01 million, and the release printed the leader's figure.

 

At million-dollar magnitudes carried to two decimals, the gap between $0.91 million and $0.92 million is 1.1%. Were September's underlying situation a gap of similar size, the two figures would present as tied once both rounded to "about $1.35 million." This is not to say September's tie must be a narrow second place, but rather that the information in the release cannot distinguish a genuine tie from a small gap concealed by rounding. This article therefore reports that wording without treating the metric as a first place.

 

For MEXC's own account of its liquidity architecture, see the platform liquidity and risk control page.

 

 

Both reports surveyed nine exchanges, so the rankings are comparable.

 

 

 

On depth, the 0.03% futures band rose from $15.71 million to $21.03 million, a 33.9% gain. The 0.03% spot band rose from $1.76 million to $3.58 million, a 103.4% gain. The 0.01% spot band rose from $0.91 million to about $1.35 million, roughly 48.4%.

 

On slippage, median slippage on $500,000 ETH futures sells fell from 0.006% to 0.003%, down 50%, with P90 falling from 0.011% to 0.007%, down 36.4%. On $1 million sells the median fell from 0.015% to 0.008%, down 46.7%, with P90 falling from 0.022% to 0.013%, down 40.9%.

 

That the median and the P90 fell together deserves separate mention. The median describes the typical case while P90 describes the worst of every ten. A median that improves while P90 holds still indicates depth that thickens in good conditions and stays thin in bad ones. Both falling together indicates the improvement holds in the tail rather than being an intermittent effect hidden by an average.

 

 

A further comparison verifies the depth increase without relying on any ranking claim at all. Depth measured at a wider band necessarily contains every order within the narrower band, so a 0.05% figure can never be smaller than a 0.03% figure.

 

MEXC's July figure at the 0.05% band was $20.83 million; its September figure at the 0.03% band was $21.03 million. Depth measured within just three basis points in September exceeded all the depth measured within five basis points in July. That conclusion uses only MEXC's own figures from two reports, touching no competitor data, so the unnamed-sample limitation does not apply to it.

 

 

July's release published the figure and rank for the 0.05% futures band at $20.83 million, third, within 2.1% of the leader. It published the ranks for BTC futures slippage at two order sizes, both second. It printed the leader's figure at the 0.01% spot band.

 

September's release contains none of those. The bands it publishes are the 0.03% futures band, where MEXC ranked first, plus the 0.01% and 0.03% spot bands. The 0.05% futures band and anything wider do not appear.

 

None of this calls the accuracy of the figures into question; the two releases are internally consistent with each other and match third-party reporting. It does mean something specific, though: a reader cannot establish from September's release where MEXC stands at wider futures bands, and July's answer to that question was third.

 

 

That the band can change the ranking can be verified from two directions.

 

 

TokenInsight's May 2026 report drew order book snapshots from April 1 to May 12 across a sample of eight centralized exchanges, and unlike July and September, third-party coverage of that edition named the venues, including Binance, Bitget, OKX, KuCoin, Bybit, MEXC and HTX.

 

In that edition, BTC and ETH futures depth was measured at the 0.05% and 0.1% bands, where Bitget, OKX and Binance led, with Bybit narrowing the gap at the wider band. Spot depth was measured at 0.03% and 0.05%, where Binance led, Bitget placed second, and KuCoin and OKX formed the next tier. In the same edition MEXC posted the tightest ETH futures slippage across all order sizes along with strong silver depth and the lowest silver slippage.

 

It should be said that May and September differ in both band and month, with the sample growing from eight venues to nine, so this comparison indicates that band and ranking are related without establishing that the band accounts for the whole difference.

 

 

The only depth measure in CoinGlass's first-half 2026 derivatives report is two-sided depth within ±1% of the mid-price, covering January 1 to June 30.

 

 

That table totals roughly $537 million, with Binance and OKX together at 64.8%, and the report's own wording is that executable liquidity for large BTC orders remained concentrated on a small number of leading venues. ETH futures depth at ±1% ran Binance $109 million, Bitget $81.37 million, OKX $73.35 million, Bybit $62.61 million and Gate $54.35 million, with the top two at 50.1%, which the report notes is 14.8 percentage points below BTC.

 

MEXC appears in neither depth table. Restraint is warranted here: the table lists five venues, and the report neither states that MEXC was measured and placed sixth nor that it was excluded, so "absent from the table" and "measured and ranked lower" are not the same claim.

 

One detail nonetheless leaves the point informative. MEXC does appear in other tables of the same report, at a 7.7% share of first-half derivatives volume, tied fourth with Bybit behind Binance at 26.6% and OKX at 11.9%, and at a 7.9% share of average daily open interest, fourth, ahead of OKX at 5.9% and Bitget at 5.7%. The same firm's first-quarter 2026 report also uses the ±1% measure, with its depth table listing only Binance, OKX and Bybit, and MEXC appearing solely in the user asset reserves section at roughly $4.8 billion.

 

So within CoinGlass's framework MEXC reaches the top four on volume and open interest while sitting outside the ±1% depth table.

 

 

 

These figures cannot be subtracted, divided or converted into one another. The band differs, the instrument coverage differs and the period differs, three independent discrepancies that make any cross-table arithmetic meaningless.

 

They measure two different things. Near-touch depth measures how much sits immediately at the best prices, which governs the execution cost of small and mid-size orders. Depth within ±1% measures the total quantity available before price moves a full percent, which governs whether a large order can complete within acceptable impact. A venue ranking first on the former while sitting outside the latter's table is a pair of facts that can hold simultaneously without contradiction.

 

 

For anyone actually placing an order, the dispute between these two measures has a usable answer: which band matters depends on how far your order pushes the price. That does not need guessing, because the measured slippage data in these reports maps the relationship out.

 

 

The gradient that table establishes runs as follows. Up to roughly $1 million, median impact generally lands inside one basis point, so the 0.01% band governs the cost. Around the $5 million mark impact advances toward three basis points and the 0.03% to 0.05% bands begin to bind. Since ±1% equals 100 basis points, making that band the binding constraint requires an order large enough to push price close to a full percent. Against CoinGlass's figures of roughly $537 million aggregate ±1% BTC futures depth across five venues and $236 million at Binance alone, that implies orders in the tens of millions before the band's edge comes into play at a leading venue.

 

So for the large majority of retail and mid-size orders, the near-touch bands are what actually determine execution cost, while the ±1% measure describes a different problem. Conversely, if single orders genuinely run into the tens of millions, first place at the 0.03% band is irrelevant and the concentration of wide-band depth is the figure to read.

 

 

Each row is the best value for that metric in its report, representing the strongest venue that period rather than a sample average, so the figures should be read as a floor on cost rather than an expectation.

 

All are sell-side data. Depth can be asymmetric between the two sides of the book, and the reports give no buy-side counterpart.

 

At magnitudes such as 0.003%, the figures carry only one significant digit. A reported 0.003% could represent anything between 0.0025% and 0.0035%, and 0.007% likewise. Ratios should therefore not be computed between these numbers. Taking the $500,000 ETH futures row, the nominal ratio of P90 to median is 2.33 times, but working through the rounding intervals puts the true ratio anywhere between roughly 1.86 and 3.0, a range too wide to support any conclusion about tail structure. The nominal 1.63 ratio on the $1 million row carries the same problem.

 

To check current conditions directly rather than relying on any report, view the live BTC to USDT order book and trades, or consult the live BTC price page. On MEXC, both spot and futures books can be expanded level by level.

 

 

Every conclusion above comes from public material, but that material is not all of the same character, which is worth stating plainly.

 

The July and September TokenInsight figures used here come from press releases commissioned by MEXC together with independent coverage from a third-party financial site, and the two agree. The report's own page returned a client error during verification and could not be read directly, so the full methodology, the specific figures for the other eight exchanges and the snapshot sampling frequency and window all remain unverified.

 

The releases are paid promotional material from MEXC. That does not imply the figures are wrong, but it does mean which bands get published and which get omitted is the commissioning party's decision, and the difference in disclosure between July and September is exactly that mechanism in operation.

 

The eight exchanges other than MEXC are unnamed in the September report, so every ranking claim is beyond external corroboration. Third-party coverage of the May report did name the venues, making it the only one of the three editions open to cross-checking.

 

CoinGlass's ±1% depth data covers the first half of 2026, three to nine months removed from TokenInsight's September data rather than contemporaneous with it. That firm also does not specify how two-sided ±1% depth is calculated, including whether the figures are notional.

 

As of this article's verification point, TokenInsight had not released an October liquidity report, leaving September the most recent edition in the series.

 

 

For James Mitchell, the story here is not the $21.03 million first place but what emerges once the July and September releases sit side by side.

 

Start with the data itself. MEXC's improvement at the near-touch band is real, and there is a way to verify it that leans on no ranking claim whatsoever. Depth at a wider band necessarily contains every order inside the narrower one, so a 0.05% figure can never be smaller than a 0.03% figure. July's 0.05% figure was $20.83 million; September's 0.03% figure was $21.03 million. Depth measured within three basis points in September beat all the depth measured within five basis points in July. That uses only MEXC's own numbers from two reports and touches none of the eight unnamed venues, so the opacity of the sample does not weaken it. It is the hardest piece of evidence in this data set.

 

The slippage side holds up equally well. Median slippage on $1 million ETH futures sells fell from 0.015% to 0.008% while P90 fell from 0.022% to 0.013%, both down 40% to 50%. I stress P90 because a median improving alone would indicate depth that thickens when conditions are good, whereas P90 improving alongside it indicates the worst of every ten got better too. The first is intermittent, the second persistent, and for anyone placing real orders the difference matters a great deal.

 

Now the part the desk should know. The brief describes the 0.01% spot band as tied for first, which follows September's release. But July's wording on the identical measure was that MEXC posted $0.91 million, nearly matching the sample leader at $0.92 million. July, in other words, was a second place by $0.01 million, and the release printed the leader's number. By September the wording became about $1.35 million, tied for first, with the comparison figure gone. At million-dollar magnitudes carried to two decimals, $0.91 million against $0.92 million is a 1.1% gap, and a gap of that size would present as a tie once both numbers round to about $1.35 million. I cannot establish that September's tie is a second place concealed by rounding, but I equally cannot use it as a first place, because the release does not contain enough to tell the two apart. So the body reports the wording without citing it as a first.

 

The shift in disclosure is the more notable thing. July published the figure and rank at the 0.05% futures band, third, within 2.1% of the leader, and the ranks for BTC futures slippage at two sizes, both second. September contains none of that, and the band it does publish is the one where MEXC ranks first. I found nothing wrong with the figures themselves, which are consistent across both editions and match third-party reporting. But a reader cannot work out from September's material where MEXC stands at wider futures bands, and July's answer was third.

 

As for why the band can decide the ranking, CoinGlass's table makes the case. It uses the ±1% two-sided measure only, its BTC futures depth table lists five venues with Binance at $236 million for 44%, and MEXC is not on it. Restraint is needed: the table holds five venues, and the report neither says MEXC was measured and placed sixth nor that it was excluded, so absence from the table is not the same as measured and ranked lower. One detail keeps it informative, though, which is that MEXC does appear in the same report's volume share table at 7.7%, tied fourth, and its average daily open interest table at 7.9%, fourth, ahead of both OKX and Bitget.

 

Both sets of figures are true and they do not conflict, because they count different things. Three basis points counts what sits right at the best prices, governing immediate cost for small and mid-size orders. A hundred basis points counts how much can be absorbed before price moves a full percent, governing whether a large order completes without disturbing the market. A venue leading the first while absent from the second's table involves no logical tension at all.

 

The useful question was never which venue is deepest but which band applies at my size. The reports already answer it. Below $1 million, median impact sits inside a basis point and the 0.01% band governs. Around $5 million, impact reaches roughly three basis points and the 0.03% to 0.05% bands start to bind. For ±1% to become the constraint, an order has to run into the tens of millions. So if you trade tens to hundreds of thousands at a time, that 0.03% first place is relevant to you; if you trade fifty million at a time, it is not, and wide-band concentration is what to read.

 

A closing note on method. These slippage figures carry one significant digit, so 0.003% could be anything from 0.0025% to 0.0035%. I worked it through in the body: the nominal P90-to-median ratio on the $500,000 ETH futures row is 2.33 times, but the rounding intervals put the true ratio somewhere between 1.86 and 3.0. That range is too wide to support any claim about tail structure. Any analysis that takes numbers like these, computes ratios and builds a narrative on the result should first ask whether the significant digits can carry it.

 

 

 

The answer depends on the measurement band. Per TokenInsight's September 2026 liquidity report, under the near-touch 0.03% band equal to three basis points, MEXC's combined BTC and ETH futures depth of $21.03 million was the deepest among the nine exchanges surveyed. Per CoinGlass's first-half 2026 report using two-sided depth within ±1%, meaning 100 basis points each side, the BTC futures depth table lists Binance at $236 million for 44.0%, OKX at $112 million, Bybit at $74.36 million, Bitget at $71.70 million and Gate at $42.64 million, with MEXC absent from the table. Both conclusions hold, because the bands differ in width by roughly 33 times and measure different things.

 

 

The 0.03% band equals three basis points and measures how much sits within a very narrow window of the best bid and offer, which governs the immediate execution cost of small and mid-size orders. The ±1% band equals 100 basis points on each side and measures the total quantity available before price moves a full percent, which governs whether a large order can complete within acceptable impact. The second window is roughly 33 times wider than the first. A venue can rank first at the near-touch band while ranking lower at the wide band without contradiction.

 

 

Spot depth at the 0.03% band ranked second explicitly at $3.58 million. Spot depth at the 0.01% band, about $1.35 million, was described as tied with another exchange for first rather than sole first, and the release gave no figure for the other venue. Slippage on $500,000 and $1 million ETH futures sells was called among the best-performing results without a specific position. The September release also did not disclose the 0.05% futures band, where July's report placed MEXC third.

 

 

Combined futures depth at the 0.03% band rose from $15.71 million to $21.03 million, a 33.9% gain. Spot depth at 0.03% rose from $1.76 million to $3.58 million, a 103.4% gain. Spot depth at 0.01% rose from $0.91 million to about $1.35 million, roughly 48.4%. On slippage, the median on $1 million ETH futures sells fell from 0.015% to 0.008% with P90 falling from 0.022% to 0.013%. One internal comparison also applies: September's $21.03 million within the 0.03% band exceeds July's $20.83 million measured out to the wider 0.05% band, and since depth at a wider band necessarily contains the narrower band, that comparison relies on no competitor data.

 

 

The median describes the typical case while P90 describes the worst of every ten executions. A median that improves while P90 stays flat indicates depth that thickens in calm conditions but not under stress, an intermittent improvement. Both falling together indicates the improvement holds in the tail of the distribution as well. MEXC's median and P90 both fell by roughly 40% to 50% across two ETH futures order sizes between July and September. Note that these figures carry only one significant digit, so ratios should not be computed between them.

 

 

Per the measured slippage data in these reports, orders up to roughly $1 million generally show median impact inside one basis point, so the 0.01% band governs the cost. Orders around $5 million push impact toward three basis points, where the 0.03% to 0.05% bands begin to bind. For ±1%, meaning 100 basis points, to become the binding constraint, an order must be large enough to move price close to a full percent, which against roughly $537 million of aggregate ±1% BTC futures depth across five venues and $236 million at Binance alone generally implies tens of millions. The large majority of retail and mid-size orders should therefore read the near-touch bands.

 

 

Partly not. The eight exchanges other than MEXC are unnamed in the September report, so every ranking claim is beyond external corroboration. The report's own page returned a client error during verification, leaving the full methodology, the other venues' specific figures and the snapshot sampling frequency unverified. The figures here come from press releases commissioned by MEXC plus independent coverage from a third-party financial site, and the two agree. Third-party coverage of the May report did name the venues, making it the only one of the three editions open to cross-checking.

 

 

No. MEXC does not appear in CoinGlass's ±1% BTC or ETH futures depth tables, but it does appear in other tables of the same first-half 2026 report, at a 7.7% share of derivatives volume, tied fourth with Bybit behind Binance at 26.6% and OKX at 11.9%, and at a 7.9% share of average daily open interest, fourth, ahead of OKX at 5.9% and Bitget at 5.7%. It should be noted that the depth table lists only five venues and the report does not state that MEXC was measured and ranked lower, so absence from the table and a measured low ranking are not the same conclusion.

 

 

The information above is provided for general market and industry data purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, legal advice, tax advice or a recommendation of any trading platform. The TokenInsight July and September 2026 liquidity report figures cited here come from paid press releases commissioned by MEXC together with independent coverage from a third-party financial site, and the two agree; the report's own page returned a client error during verification and could not be read directly, so the full methodology, the specific figures for the other surveyed exchanges and the order book snapshot sampling frequency and window all remain unverified. The releases are promotional material, meaning the decision of which bands to publish and which to omit rests with the commissioning party, and this article has set out the difference in disclosure between July and September. The eight exchanges other than MEXC are unnamed in the September report, so all ranking claims are beyond independent external corroboration; the description of the 0.01% spot band as tied for first rests on an approximate figure with no comparison value given, and this article reports that wording without treating the metric as a first place. CoinGlass's two-sided ±1% depth data covers the first half of 2026 and is not contemporaneous with TokenInsight's September data, and that firm does not specify its calculation method; MEXC is absent from its depth tables, which list only five venues, and the report does not state that MEXC was measured and ranked lower, so absence and a low measured ranking are not the same conclusion. The TokenInsight and CoinGlass depth figures differ in band width, instrument coverage and measurement period, and cannot be subtracted, divided or converted into one another. The slippage figures carry only one significant digit at magnitudes such as 0.003%, so ratios should not be computed between them and used to infer distributional structure; each row represents the best value for that metric in its report, reflecting the strongest venue that period rather than a sample average, and should be read as a floor on cost rather than an expectation, and all are sell-side data while depth may be asymmetric between the two sides of the book. Order book depth and slippage change continuously with market conditions, time of day and volatility, and no historical snapshot represents current or future execution conditions. Crypto asset prices are highly volatile and leveraged futures products can produce losses exceeding the initial outlay. Readers should verify exchanges' live order book data themselves before making any decision, judge against their own financial circumstances, order sizes and risk tolerance, and consult a qualified professional where appropriate. The MEXC Crypto Pulse team accepts no liability for any direct or indirect loss arising from the use of this information.

 

 

James Mitchell specializes in technical analysis, market trends, and trading strategies for both Bitcoin and altcoins. Based in London, he has over 10 years of experience in financial markets. Before joining MEXC Learn, James worked as a senior analyst at a leading European investment firm, where he developed expertise in risk management and quantitative trading. His transition to cryptocurrency markets began in 2017, and he has since become recognized for his data-driven approach. He holds a Master's degree in Financial Economics from the London School of Economics. His analytical approach combines traditional technical analysis with on-chain metrics to provide readers with actionable insights.

 

Areas of Expertise: Technical Analysis, Market Trends and Cycles, Trading Strategies, Bitcoin and Altcoin Analysis, Risk Management.

 

 

 

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