How can Crypto-Exchanges Profit in this Bear Market? (Hint: IEO)

The bear market has brought about major losses for exchanges, with the dwindling number of active users and traders registered across many exchanges. To further cut costs and streamline processes, exchanges have been letting people go and closing offices all over the world.

However, such measures could still not bring back exchanges back to their heyday of earning millions per day through wash trading and faking volumes.

To combat this, many exchanges have chosen to lay low this crypto winter, ramping up on educational offerings to educate the communities on the benefits and potentials of blockchain technology and hopefully gain their business in the near future.

More ambitious exchanges have also taken the chance to explore other opportunities by exploring sophisticated offerings such as futures and options trading after witnessing Bitmex’s success in liquidating users’ fund and wanting a slice of it as well.

A current trending phenomenon in the crypto exchange-verse is bringing a glimmer of hope for exchanges in this crypto winter in the form of initial exchange offering (IEO), a new form of ICO which are simply ICOs held on exchanges. Proponents have seen this as an effective way of ensuring the quality of projects while opponents have seen this as yet another money grabbing opportunity for exchanges.

So how can exchanges fully maximise this opportunity? We offer 4 tips for exchanges in this exclusive article.

Tip 1: Do not call it an IEO

Calling an IEO an IEO is just so passe. It is best for you to blatantly deny that you have heard of an IEO before to differentiate your exchange and make your IEO offering stand out among the 100000 exchanges offering IEOs — what does the “E” stands for anyway? We recommend to at least include a verb in the name to make your IEO brand sound more lively — E.g. words like run, launch, fly, rocket, next, sprint can be good starters

Tip 2: Offer tiered packages to maximise the value

YOIO — You only IEO once. So why stop at a fixed price? Get your BD pals to come up with convoluted packages to leech projects dry as much as possible. If you can’t convince, then confuse.

We recommend a progressive tiered format (Of course, always aim for the highest tier )

• Basic tier: 50K for IEO
• VIP tier: 70K IEO + listing package
• Partner tier: 80K IEO + listing + PR package
• Elite VIP tier: 100K IEO + listing + PR + marketing package
• Super Elite VIP tier: 120K IEO + listing + PR + marketing + trading competition package

TIp 3: Always close the IEO within 30 seconds

Scarcity breeds demand. So always make an IEO sell out within 30 seconds — get the project or market maker to buy back tokens if necessary (at least for the first round) and shill the hell out of it — “ABC exchange sells out EFG token like hotcakes in 2.22 seconds”. After all, perception and branding are key.

Tip 4: Bring in your exchange token to the party

Of course, do not forget to weave in your exchange token wherever possible. In IEO sales as the preferred funding means, offering 30% bonus tokens or as lottery stakes for IEO… Then sit back and watch it moon.

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In this saturated market, it is indeed fight or flight for most exchanges. Other than existing tactics such as copy and pasting whatever big exchanges are doing, what do you think are some future innovation exchanges will come up with?

How can Crypto-Exchanges Profit in this Bear Market? (Hint: IEO) was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.