Comment by _factor
4 months ago
Try to become an insider at one of these exchanges even with a couple million dollars. See how it goes.
This is like Coke ONLY giving discounts to Costco instead of anywhere else so that Costco can reap the rewards. Walmart, Target, they can all pay full price.
The convenience store spends more money to package individual items. A crypto transaction is the difference of a keystroke. They are not comparable on many fronts.
Just curious, do you have concerns/issues with progressive discounts?
Everyone is still paying the same full price (for the volume tier they are in).
Only those transactions at the higher volume tier get the higher discount (and everyone is eligible for that same discount).
They charged consumers on average 155 bp (!), and institutional 4 bp.
So consumers are charged 40x. Nice business. TradFi has wet dreams of margins like that for simple exchange business.
Source: Their 2024 10K, pages 92 and 94, and my calculation.
For 2024, in $bn:
From a capitalist economic perspective, it makes logical sense to maximize your profits and entice wealthier customers with quantity discounts.
From a societal impact perspective, it adds transactions that may not have happened otherwise, but these are mostly isolated effects from what I can tell. This can spur the economy with spending, and be more efficient. Ultimately however, it ensures that those with more money and the ability to buy in bulk lose less money than the tired masses. This should lead to wealth inequality over time.
Without knowing what impact each of these individual variables has in isolation, it’s difficult to define metrics for “net benefit” to society with any real certainty, let alone begin to measure them.