A practical approach to exchange listings

For those interested or in support of getting MAID listed on more exchanges and hopefully larger, more reputable ones eventually, there is a basic first step we can take. Read on.

One of our problems in this community is we are mostly all die hard MAID HODLers that aren’t interested in trading MAID or don’t have access to an exchange in certain jurisdictions on which to trade. This along with lack of interest from speculators / traders in the wider crypto community has lead us to a bit of a liquidity crisis. But why is this such a big deal and what can we realistically do given our circumstances?

Low liquidity / volume is a key challenge inhibiting attempts to list MAID on additional exchanges. Exchanges are wary about listing older coins that don’t have a history of strong market performance. In addition, low liquidity makes the MAID market easy to manipulate.

One commonly used way to address these challenges is to enlist market-makers. Market-makers ensure there is liquidity in a market by providing liquidity to both buyers and sellers in a given market.Enlisting a market-maker to revitalize the MAID market would be a positive signal for larger, more reputable exchanges, make it easier to get MAID wrapped, and minimize the threat of market manipulation that might/could be suppressing MAID’s market value.

There are many well-known firms that provide market-making services. There are also different ways to structure these deals however, a retainer model is probably best.

Before you cringe at the numbers below, realize this would be less for us as we take baby steps, tackling smaller exchanges first which should open us up to larger exchanges by having liquidity / volume and along the way we should develop an organic market.

The example given is Blockstack, who retained GSR to provide liquidity for Stacks. The terms of that deal were:

  • $100K one-time setup fee
  • $20K monthly payment for 6 months (total of $120,000)
  • $1M loan in BTC and ETH with zero interest to fund trading (Loans are typically made in ETH/BTC & the project’s token. The same amount of coins will be returned to the lender at the end of the loan’s term. The lender profits on the increase in the project token’s value.)

Market-making in support of MAID should not need to cost as much because the target exchanges are relatively lower volume. Some larger MAID holders on the forum have already indicated potential interest in funding a market-maker. However, they would like to know if any other MAID holders would be interested in collaborating to get this done.

Please share your thoughts on enlisting a market-maker to revitalize the MAID market. Some of you may feel we’re close enough to skip this step and that is reasonable. Given there has been interest from some larger MAID holders this could potentially take off pretty quickly if there is enough collaborative support.

If you would like to fund enlisting a market-maker, please feel free to DM me if that would be more comfortable for you.

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To me this seems to just be something that will hold the price down, there’s coins for sale that aren’t being bought, I can’t see adding more coins to the coins already for sale helping the price grow any faster so I’m against this idea.

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I know it may seem that way, but the opposite is true. Improved liquidity will allow more people enter the market comfortably. On top of that, good market makers will always have liquidity on both sides, but the algorithm will know when selling pressure has dried up, moving up the price and setting up liquidity again. Selling pressure comes in, they move the price down, rinse repeat.

What I would try to do is contact a B-tier exchange, like bitstamp, probit or Kucoin. Apply for a listing and mention that we’re looking for a marketmaker at the moment and ask if they can recommend us one. They often have the right connections to get the ball rolling and might give us the edge in getting listed.

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Well we will have to agree to disagree.
Plenty of coins for sale but no one wants to pay the price ppl are asking.
Adding coins to the sell side will ultimately stop the price rising, thats just common sense.

If there is a low liquidity issue its because , IMO anyway the coin is seriously undervalued, when true value is realised people will happily sell and voila, no liquidity issue.

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For your information, on average they will add an equal amount to the buy side, balancing pressure on both sides of the market.

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I get that, but it will still stop us rising to a fare valuation price, at which point ppl like myself will gladly start trading again and adding liquidity, but this price is to low, the coin is worth more.

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Without market-making, I don’t think MAID will rise to a (higher) fare valuation price full stop. There’s just not enough liquidity. Something must be done to catalyze liquidity. It’s unlikely that people on this forum can provide enough liquidity to turn that around without working with a market-maker for a few months.

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Market making doesn’t need to be done by few individuals, if people make good trading bot that tries to catch oversold/overbought premiums you will generate volume/turnover.

I believe what is most important is to gain access to platforms that have a lot of liquidity/volume on them and by getting listed on those it will be easier for people to buy and sell. Getting listed for example on Binance would have a big impact and market growth, you don’t need to pay market markers there as there are many people trading on there everyday. The MAID market just doesn’t have enough exposure because Bittrex is limiting US citizens and also not the biggest liquidity in general.

Binance might be expensive to get listed on but it will open many doors. If MaidSafe would succeed to have MAID listed there it can also get listed on the Binance Smart Chain opening doors to a DEX. Fees are cheaper and fast transactions, there is already a big move happening from ETH to BSC.
It’s a win-win, you gain massive liquidity on Binance CEX, since the token is listed on Binance now you can issue a Binance Smart Chain Token which can be used on DEX’s. We gain exposure to both CEX and DEX by doing this.

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My understanding of how the market works supports @bones experience. The price does not depend on liquidity. Yes, a big whale needs a lot of liquidity to buy, otherwise it won’t care.

But the plebs do not care for liquidity, they buy and sell for small sums. There is currently small liquidity because the price of the token is totally underestimated.

100 plebs to press the buy button and they will shoot the price of the token in the skies…

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These exchanges want to see more liquidity in order to list. It’s a catch 22.

These exchanges also charge high listing fees, so unless another generous donor surfaces (and/or there’s effective crowd funding), I’m not sure how listing on large exchanges will be possible.

The plebs follow what the whales & crypto influencers do. If Elon tweeted “buy MAID” tomorrow, thousands of people would attempt to do so. But, given the structure of the current MAID market, Elon would never do that.

Exchanges know that plebs follow whales as well, which is why they ask what influential crypto personalities support your project during their listing process. Unfortunately, I’m not able to provide a convincing answer to this on the apps b/c crypto influencers and whales are wary of the MAID market.

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I wouldnt dare to predict Elon :smiley:

I know current situation sucks for people from USA, but for other people Bittrex is working ok. As I see it with people around me, registering to another exchange just to buy MAID will stop people who are looking for daytrading, for people who want in because they see future in Safenetwork Bittrex registration isnt dealbreaker.

The main thing I dont see here is why is low trading volume problem (in other way than exchange listings)? MAID is nothing like Bitcoin or XRP, Safenetwork will provide value in different ways. Most people are buying tickets to Metallica concerts to see the band, not to speculate with the tickets.
Real users will come when they see testnets and beta network. With users comes trade, but speculators wont became users. We need influencers writhing about technology, not price movements or trade volume, trade volume will come itself and I see no point forcing it ahead of time.

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FYI everyone, the price of MAID has risen a lot in recent weeks. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: and even more over the last year.

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This is addressed in detail here:

And here:

And here:

I know the idea of investing to fix MAID’s exchange exposure & liquidity crisis is uncomfortable for many here, but I do hope we can rally to get this done. Last year when the idea of a Safe Community Foundation was floating around the forum, many people were against it / scared. Now we have the BambooGarden Fund. I hope a similar breakthrough will occur on this front as well.

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Right. The biggest hurdle here is acceptance, the next and smaller hurdle is crowdsourced participation to lighten the load for everyone. As was mentioned in the OP, there are some large MAID holders willing to take the bulk of the load but they don’t want to go it alone or not be supported in this effort.

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I completely agree with @bones and @Dimitar.

If you think the price is overpiced, sell and help to create market yourself. Or you feel MAID is still hugely undervalued, so by some and help to create the other side of the market. Sum of individual actions is enough.

Also consider the opportunity cost of this action… 320k$/year + no return on 1M$ loan? No thank you… Sometimes no action is the best action.

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I get it, I really do. I’m glad to see the price rising and eventually we’ll get listed just because we’ll have a working product and demand. At that point it will already be SN!

On the other hand the price could appreciate more rapidly if given more exposure via exchanges. People aren’t looking to just sell MAID but buying is becoming harder (which kind of seems to help price appreciate artificially). With more exchange exposure we could get much more buying. Market-making isn’t just giving depth to sell or buy but both.

I appreciate everyone’s input so far and I respect everyone’s opinions on the matter.

Don’t think I’m coming from some standpoint of greed. I just want more exposure for the project to increase demand and interest. Some of those who “invest” will translate to users and others will be pure speculation. But people that make good money on a project usually do become fan boys/girls as long as they don’t sell their entire bag.

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Nobody is arguing it COULDN’T.

Not for small people. If you are accumulating slowly, you are normally facing less than 0,3% spread. Current low liquidity is really not felt by anybody who wants to buy some 3000 MAID in the evening.

I’m not sure I get this market making thing. When hitbtc do it, everyone shouts fake volume. How is this different?

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It’s just providing bids and asks (liquidity) around the market price, not actually executing trades artificially. The liquidity is there to facilitate legitimate trades.

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The price has risen because all coins have risen driven by BTC but it’s in a massive downtrend still.
To put that into further context, it lost some 97% of it’s value from ATH. If it had barely moved from there given the 9x increase in BTC then alarm bells would be ringing

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