How Crypto Exchanges Actually Make Money

Crypto exchanges might look like simple apps where you buy crypto and watch the charts move, but they’re actually money machines.

The truth is: “They don’t care if you win or lose, only that you keep trading.”

While you’re stressing over every pump and crash, the exchange is calm because it gets paid no matter what. Here’s how they do it, and the different ways they turn your trades into their profits.

1. Transaction Fees

The biggest and most obvious way exchanges profit is through transaction fees.

Every time you buy or sell, they take a tiny cut. Usually it’s somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% per trade. Sounds like nothing, right? But multiply that by millions of trades happening daily across the world, and you’ve got a money printer.

For exchanges, it doesn’t matter if Bitcoin hits $100K or crashes to $10K. As long as people are trading, they’re earning.

2. The Spread

Some platforms don’t even show you the fee upfront. Instead, they make money through something called the spread.

Imagine Bitcoin’s “true” price is $30,000. The exchange might sell it to you for $30,200 and buy it back from someone else at $29,800. That $200 gap? Straight into their…