Market making in digital tokens used to be a font of outsized profitability. The picture today is very different as costs jump and investors avoid a crypto sector scarred by a $2 trillion rout.
“The FTX debacle was a wake-up call for the industry,” said Le Shi, head of trading at Auros. Risks stemming from leaving assets on exchanges weren’t always prioritized “but that’s changed and we understand higher cost is going to be a way of doing business now,” he said. Market-making firms Jane Street Group and Jump Crypto have pulled back from digital assets amid low trading volumes and ebbing volatility, as well as a US regulatory squeeze on exchanges such as Binance Holdings and Coinbase Global.
The majority of trading in spot tokens occurs on centralized exchanges — marketplaces managed by companies such as Binance, Coinbase and OKX that take custody of assets to facilitate buying and selling. Crypto also offers peer-to-peer decentralized platforms like Uniswap that enable trading via algorithmic, blockchain-based software known as smart contracts, with users keeping custody of tokens rather than handing them over.
“While this is partly due to structural reasons — market makers leaving the space after sustaining losses or permanently revising their risk management strategies after FTX — the low volatility environment is also playing a role in keeping liquidity providers out of the market,” Kaiko said.