CeFi Loans Decline by 68% as DeFi Dominates Market – Coincu

Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms have overtaken centralized finance (CeFi) in lending market share by the end of 2024. CeFi’s loan volume dramatically fell, revealing a significant shift in the crypto landscape.

This shift reflects increased user preference for DeFi’s transparency and resilience after the collapse of major CeFi lenders.

CeFi Lending Plummets to $11.2B Amid DeFi Surge

The CeFi loan market sharply declined with a loan size standing at $11.2 billion by the end of 2024, a steep fall from the $34.8 billion peak in 2022. The fall came after major CeFi lenders like Genesis, Celsius, BlockFi, and Voyager suffered collapses between 2022 and 2023. Tether, Galaxy, and Ledn emerged as prominent players by the end of 2024, dominating much of the market through their extensive loan book sizes.

This contraction aligns with a broader market trend favoring DeFi, which managed to capture over 60% of the crypto lending space. As DeFi thrives on real-time settlements and operational stability, it surpasses CeFi’s opaque structures. Institutional borrowers increasingly turn away from CeFi solutions, chasing DeFi’s automated and trust-minimized features.

Alex Thorn, Head of Research at Galaxy Digital, emphasized the contrasting market dynamics, stating, “DeFi borrowing has experienced a stronger recovery than CeFi lending… attributed to the permissionless nature of blockchain-based applications and the survival of lending applications through bear market chaos.”

Historic Shift as DeFi Captures Majority Market Share

Did you know? CeFi-to-DeFi market shift is the largest in crypto history, echoing a past trend in 2019 when DeFi first gained traction, but at a much smaller scale then.

Bitcoin’s current price is $84,746.91, maintaining a market cap of $1.68 trillion and controlling 62.85% market dominance, as per CoinMarketCap on April 15, 2025. Despite a 0.41% drop in price over 24 hours, it gained 5.64% over seven days.

The Coincu research team suggests long-term benefits from blockchain’s transparency despite short-term market fluctuations. Experts foresee potential regulatory focus as decentralized protocols become dominant forces in fintech ecosystems.