Most people perceive the market as a game of "guess the direction": up or down, long or short - as if the outcome depends entirely on that choice. For the average trader, this is indeed the case: get the direction wrong and you take a loss; get it right and you lock in a profit. At the same time, there's a nuance that often goes unnoticed. While some try to predict price movements, others make money regardless of where the price goes.
This is where the market maker comes in. They don't participate in "guessing" because their model doesn't require it. Their income doesn't depend on whether BTC rises or falls in the near term. They profit from the trading process itself - from liquidity provision and trade execution. It's a completely different way of operating: more restrained, systematic, and often not obvious to those who look at the order book and see only buying and selling.
Why I Think Most Traders Misunderstand Where Fees Actually Come From
Let's take Hyperliquid as one of the clearest examples of a new market infrastructure layer. The decentralized exchange has delivered results that, just a year ago, would have looked unrealistic for a DeFi project. And the most interesting part isn't even the headline numbers - it's the mechanism behind them.
The platform processed $2.95 trillion in volume over the year: 198.9 billion transactions with an average daily volume of $8.34 billion. It didn't "predict" the direction of BTC or ETH. Instead, it simply provided liquidity and charged a micro-fee on every trade. In August 2025, Hyperliquid set a record: $106 million in monthly revenue from nearly $400 billion in perpetuals volume.
According to DefiLlama, Hyperliquid generated an annualized revenue of around $747M in 2025, with monthly trading volumes exceeding $200B. For context, the crypto derivatives market in 2024–2025 is estimated at $20–28 trillion in annual volume, with roughly 76% of all crypto trading activity coming from derivatives rather than spot markets.
The parallel with TradFi is obvious. Citadel Securities, the largest market maker in traditional markets, handles around 40% of U.S. retail equity trading volume. In Q1 2025, the firm paid $388 million just for the right to access that order flow (payment for order flow). In 2024, Citadel Securities together with Jane Street generated $30.2 billion in combined trading revenue - roughly 2–3x more than comparable hedge funds running directional strategies - with an EBITDA margin of 58% in Q1 2025.
Bid, Ask, and Spread: how three numbers turn into a billion-dollar business
The mechanics of market making are simple in terms of math, but massive in impact. A market maker simultaneously places a bid (buy price) and an ask (sell price). The difference between them is the spread, and that's where the revenue comes from. It's not a market prediction or a directional bet - it's a business built on capturing price differences that, at scale, turn into consistent profits.
The key is that exposure is constantly hedged. If an asset is bought on one exchange, it is almost immediately sold on another where the price is slightly higher. This is cross-exchange arbitrage, and it allows participants to monetize micro-inefficiencies in the market without taking directional risk.
What I Look at When I Evaluate a Market Maker Program
To attract market makers, leading exchanges build dedicated programs with rebates, extended API limits, and personalized support. The logic is fairly straightforward: liquidity attracts traders, traders generate volume, and volume produces fees for the entire ecosystem. It's a mutually beneficial model that keeps the market in balance.
Zooming out, the logic behind these programs is simple: exchanges depend on market makers just as much as market makers depend on exchanges. Market makers provide order book depth, and depth is one of the key criteria for large traders and institutional participants. Better order book → higher trust → more users → higher volumes → more fees for the entire system.
So,
If you've ever felt like the market behaves "randomly" or even unfairly, it's usually because you're only seeing one layer of it - price direction.
Once you start understanding how liquidity is actually formed and who makes money regardless of where price moves, the bigger picture becomes much clearer and almost mechanical. And the better you understand this layer, the less you try to "fight" the market, and the easier it becomes to read it as a system that operates under its own rules.
If you have any questions, feel free to DM me - I'll explain the product in more detail.
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