Hello Everyone,
This community never ceases to amaze. Pulling together, organising, and putting hands in pockets for this project is just what we’ve come to expect, but it doesn’t make it any less amazing each time it happens.
The area of exchange listings, and anything to do with MaidSafeCoin, does come with some legal obligations for MaidSafe the company though. In particular, any new listing on a centralised exchange would require MaidSafe to be a party in a contract with the exchange, and take on certain legal liabilities.
Listing fees would have to be paid in accordance with this agreement, and would necessitate MaidSafe’s involvement in handling the funds in some way; which would require legal scrutiny, accounting, governance and the like.
It’s a nice problem to have in some regards, but as with the Bamboo Garden Fund, does take a fair amount of administration and organisation.
And as we have described before, any new exchange listing comes with its own administrative and legal costs, of varying degrees.
On top of that, there are certain things, as a UK business we just cannot do. This includes things like ‘market-making’, being a liquidity provider, or any action that would—or could be interpreted as—manipulating the coin price.
Then there are things we have to be very cautious about: namely making public statements about what we financially have available, or are willing to commit to be listed on exchanges, regardless of the source. As I’m sure you can appreciate, this does make finding good-faith, mutually beneficial agreements a touch more difficult.
It’s also one of the reasons we have an on-going stance of not paying listing fees. It is fundamental to the project—one of the reasons it exists—to break down barriers to information, and allow individuals to sidestep the gatekeepers to the digital economy. So we have to have an awareness, and to be able to discern the difference between partnering with businesses who have complementary skills, for mutual benefit, and when we are just paying a middleman for market access: establishing the new gatekeepers.
Listing fees, by any measure, are eye-wateringly expensive. It’s money that could otherwise be put to use completing the Network, or perhaps building the new financial systems of the future: without the middlemen.
While we can, and will, countenance contributing to the cost of getting MAID (or soon Safe Network Tokens) integrated with exchanges, say by paying for some development time to get things up and running, we continue to stand by our rule of not paying listing fees.
It’s awesome to have been able to add on a new exchange recently, and expand access to MAID to the US. We are delighted.
And while we do continue to explore and negotiate further listings, we also continue to exercise caution when suggesting that listing on more exchanges will have a direct positive impact on coin price.
Our ultimate aim is to give you all the tools to make the digital economy and trading platforms of the future with no middlemen involved. So what we need to build and how we can empower the community to make it happen will be at the front of our minds, and remains our primary focus.
