The CEO of powerhouse crypto exchange Binance says crypto traders are firmly back in town, with record-high trading volumes being recorded at the Malta-based exchange.

In a new interview with CNBC’s Crypto Trader, Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao says that it is not just the volume (in USD or nominal BTC) but the number of orders and trades being placed on the exchange that is currently seeing all-time highs.

The message from the Binance CEO highlights the return of positive sentiment in the crypto markets on a wave of optimism around scaling and an active user base among a burgeoning dApp and tokenised ecosystem.

People waiting  ‘to buy the dip’

CZ said in the interview: “The fact that the price can go up so quickly means that there was actually a lot of money waiting to buy Bitcoin. And they were really fearing missing out – the FOMO mentality.

“The fact that the price can go up so quickly means all that money was ready, which basically means that people still have a lot of confidence in this industry. So it’s not like everyone is scared away.”

Zhao mentions that he has seen “more stablecoin deposits in the last few days than ever” backed by other all-time records in “trading volume per transaction, the number of transactions, and the number of orders people are submitting”, which are all above the levels seen during January 2018.

He states: “It’s just that now, the Bitcoin price is a little bit lower, so the total trading volume in US dollars seems lower. But we’re actually seeing – trading volume wise, system load wise – we’re at an all-time high. And user registrations jumped as well. So all indications are things are going up. Every piece of data we have is going up right now.”

Calling out Roubini

CZ even had time to call out the infamous crypto sceptic Nouriel Roubini, who he saw debate on stage at a Seoul-based conference with Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

He asked the question, “Why does he have the time to attend a conference in an industry that he doesn’t approve of?” and went on to question his logic for calling out Vitalik, whose views the CEO fully agrees with.

‘Every piece of data we have is going up right now’

According to Zhao, trading volume began to increase ahead of last week’s big surge in the price of Bitcoin. At the moment, we are consistently seeing $1-1.5 billion worth of volume a day on the ‘Bitwise verified‘ exchange. That is in contrast to the $300-500 million we saw traded across the platform during the first few months of the year.

But according to CZ: “There was a little bit of a warming up, even before the spike. One or two months ago, the speed of registrations was picking up. But the bigger growth corresponded very tightly with the spike itself. So when you’re spiking, there are more people registering. So the curve is very similar.

“Even the Bitcoin price itself was warming up before the spike. So the curve [to trading interest] is very, very correlated.”