The Truth About the 2025 Crypto Market: Why Do Market Makers Dominate Liquidity?

In the crypto trading ecosystem of 2025, there is a group of participants who are less conspicuous but determine your buying and selling prices, speed, and costs—they are the Market Makers.

Why are Market Makers so crucial?

Imagine: without Market Makers, you want to buy 10 BTC but find only a few sparse sell orders on the order book, with prices jumping from $87,330 directly to $88,000. This is a trading market without Market Makers—liquidity is exhausted, spreads are huge, and transactions are difficult.

The core value of Market Makers is to solve this pain point. They continuously place both buy and sell orders in the market, ensuring that traders can always execute trades at reasonable prices. According to the latest data, leading Market Makers like Wintermute, GSR, Amber Group handle tens of thousands of trades daily, supporting the entire crypto market’s “capillaries.”

How do Market Makers profit?

Don’t think Market Makers are doing charity. Their profit source is quite simple: the bid-ask spread.

Taking Bitcoin as an example, suppose the current market price is around $87,330. A Market Maker might:

• Place a buy order at: $87,320
• Place a sell order at: $87,340
• Spread: $20

When a trader accepts this price, the Market Maker earns the $20 difference. It may seem small, but when the daily trading volume reaches millions of trades, this thin profit margin can accumulate into a stable income stream.

Advanced Market Makers also use high-frequency trading algorithms (HFT) to adjust prices within milliseconds, capable of executing thousands of trades in a second, precisely capturing opportunities in market microstructure.

Market Maker vs Market Taker: Different roles, both indispensable

Many people easily confuse these two concepts:

Market Maker (liquidity provider):

• Actively place orders, waiting for others to fill
• Profit from accumulating bid-ask spreads
• Stable strategies, relatively controllable risks
• Need to continuously maintain positions and inventory

Market Taker (liquidity consumer):

• Trade at market prices for immediate execution
• Pay spread costs, seeking quick fills
• Risks depend on market trends
• High flexibility, but higher trading costs

These two types of participants form a perfect complement: Market Makers continuously provide trading opportunities, while Takers consume these opportunities, jointly maintaining the healthy operation of the market.

Top-tier Market Maker teams in the 2025 crypto market

As of now, the industry has formed a clear first echelon:

Wintermute - Absolute liquidity giant

• Asset management scale: approximately $237 million
• Number of assets covered: 300+ coins
• Number of deployed chains: 30+ mainstream public chains
• Total trading volume (as of November 2024): nearly $6 trillion
• Number of exchanges served: 50+

Wintermute leads the market with its algorithmic trading technology and global layout. They are active not only on centralized exchanges (CEX) but also deeply involved in the decentralized exchange (DEX) ecosystem.

GSR - Diversified layout by a decade-old veteran

• Investment coverage: 100+ top Web3 projects
• Exchange coverage: 60+ mainstream platforms
• Service scope: TokenEmitter, OTC, derivatives coverage -特色：既是Market Maker，也是早期风投

GSR’s advantage lies in its strong industry chain integration ability, providing comprehensive liquidity solutions for new projects’ token launches.

Amber Group - Institutional-grade AI-driven player

• Managed trading capital: about $1.5 billion
• Institutional clients: 2000+
• Ecosystem supported by daily trading volume: over $1 trillion
• Technical feature: leading AI risk control models

Amber Group is known for its strong compliance and rigorous risk management, especially favored by institutional investors.

Keyrock - Data-driven new generation

• Daily order processing: 550,000+
• Markets covered: 1,300+
• Exchanges deployed: 85
• Founded: 2017, having crossed multiple market cycles

Keyrock’s core competitiveness is its data analysis capability, allowing them to dynamically adjust liquidity deployment based on market microstructure.

DWF Labs - Dual engine of investment + market making

• Investment portfolio: 700+ projects
• Proportion covered in CoinMarketCap Top 100: over 20%
• Proportion covered in CoinMarketCap Top 1000: over 35%
• Exchange coverage: 60+ Tier 1 platforms

DWF Labs’ uniqueness lies in the close integration of investment and market making, providing native liquidity support for portfolio projects’ tokens.

Four major values Market Makers create for exchanges

1. Deepening liquidity

With continuous quoting from Market Makers, the order book of exchanges transforms from sparse to deep. This means large trades no longer cause drastic price swings, and traders can trust the market’s “carrying capacity.”

2. Ensuring price stability

Especially during sharp market fluctuations, Market Makers proactively adjust strategies to stabilize the market. In bear markets, they add buy orders at low levels for support; in bull markets, they increase sell orders to curb excessive rises—this market regulation function is called an “automatic stabilizer.”

3. Lower trading costs

Narrower bid-ask spreads mean all traders’ costs decrease. Compared to exchanges without Market Makers, the spread difference can be 10-20 times higher.

4. Surge in trading volume and fee income

A liquid market attracts more participants, increasing trading frequency and scale, which naturally boosts the exchange’s fee revenue. Additionally, Market Makers often sign incentive agreements with exchanges, serving as an extra income source.

Three major risks faced by Market Makers

Behind the glamorous profits, Market Makers also bear significant risks:

1. Market volatility risk

Multiple black swan events in 2024 proved that crypto market volatility far exceeds traditional finance. Large positions held by Market Makers can depreciate significantly within hours. If their algorithms do not react promptly, it can directly lead to huge losses.

2. Inventory risk

Market Makers need to hold millions to billions of dollars in crypto assets to support daily operations. These assets face the risk of price declines, especially in small or illiquid markets, where this risk is amplified multiple times.

3. Technical and regulatory risks

• System failures may cause un-cancelled orders, resulting in huge losses
• Different jurisdictions have varying definitions and regulatory standards for Market Makers
• Some countries may classify Market Maker activities as “market manipulation,” bringing legal risks
• Operating across multiple regions incurs high compliance costs

Conclusion: Market Makers are a sign of crypto market maturity

The crypto market of 2025 is no longer in its wild growth phase. The continuous evolution and professionalism of Market Makers like Wintermute, GSR, Amber Group, Keyrock, and DWF Labs mark the industry’s progression toward institutional-level standards.

For traders, exchanges with top-tier Market Makers often mean a better trading experience. For exchanges themselves, partnering with quality Market Makers has become an important indicator of competitiveness.

However, it’s important to recognize that Market Makers are not omnipotent. While they create liquidity, they also bear market risks, and their stability ultimately depends on the health of underlying assets and market rationality. In the future, as the crypto market continues to mature, Market Makers will become more specialized and diversified, but their core value in maintaining the market’s “normal breathing” remains irreplaceable.