What a crypto market maker learned along the way

Crypto market maker EchoTrade has now supported more than 2,500 token launches since it was founded in 2023. The firm currently runs order books for over 100 active projects across 90+ centralized and decentralized exchanges, and over the past year became an official Liquidity Partner of major exchanges including MEXC. It has also become one of the largest crypto market makers providing Binance Alpha listing support, with a dedicated team of traders for Alpha launches.

To understand what sets the firm apart, we looked at how EchoTrade works, spoke with its team, and went through what the founders who launched with it say about the experience. Here is what we learned about why projects choose EchoTrade for their launches, and what 2,500 launches can teach the next founder.

Competition among crypto market makers is high, and the bear market has reshaped the field. Many firms changed their business model to get through it. Some moved into token audits, others into pure advisory with no launch support, and the largest players are expanding into ETFs, prediction markets and traditional trading. EchoTrade stayed with launches and built its business around token launches of every size: from a first Binance Alpha showcase to simultaneous spot and futures listings on tier-1 exchanges, across 10+ venues at once.

Who is EchoTrade?

EchoTrade is a crypto market making firm founded in 2023. It quotes two-sided markets for token projects across more than 90 exchanges, from Binance, Bybit and OKX to KuCoin, Gate.io and MEXC, where it is an official Liquidity Partner.

The team counts more than 50 professionals, and the trading desk has some of the strictest entry requirements in the industry: only around 5% of the traders who apply make it onto the desk. That desk has become one of the firm’s main selling points, and founders who have worked with EchoTrade describe the team as the reason they stayed. Traders work in shifts across Asia, Europe and the US, so every book has someone on it around the clock.

What does the token launch market look like in 2026?

The backdrop matters for understanding why a firm like EchoTrade has grown. The token launch market of 2026 is smaller, more selective and less forgiving than the one founders remember from 2024.

The numbers show it. Of the tokens that held their TGE in 2025, 84.7% now trade below their launch valuation, with a median drawdown of 71%, according to Memento Research data reported by crypto.news. Exchanges have become choosier too. CryptoRank’s analysis of listings on the ten largest centralized exchanges shows memecoin listings falling for six quarters in a row, from 196 in Q4 2024 to 41 in Q2 2026, while tokenized real-world assets grew to nearly one in five new listings in the first half of 2026.

Liquidity has narrowed at the same time. Trading activity has concentrated around Bitcoin, Ether and a small group of large caps, which leaves new tokens competing for a thinner pool of buyers. In that market, a launch is no longer carried by the cycle. It holds up or fails on preparation: who is quoting the book, how deep it is, and whether anyone is still there a month later.

That shift has changed what founders look for in a market maker. Price used to be the first question. Now it is experience with launches like theirs, and whether the firm will still be supporting the token after the attention fades.

The quieter market also has an upside, and many founders across the market now see this as a good time to launch. Competition for attention is lower than in 2024, and launch services, from listings to marketing to liquidity, cost noticeably less than at the peak. Most of all, the people who join a project now are not chasing a quick pump. A community built in a quiet market tends to stay with the project for the long term, instead of disappearing the day after the launch.

How does EchoTrade work with Binance Alpha launches?

Binance Alpha has become one of the first stops for many new tokens. It is the section of Binance Wallet where Binance showcases early-stage projects for around 24 hours, with direct purchase through Quick Buy. More than 40 of EchoTrade’s launches in recent months have gone through Alpha.

Because an Alpha showcase compresses demand into a single day, EchoTrade runs it with a dedicated department of traders who specialize in Binance Alpha and know exactly how its on-chain market behaves during the showcase.

Selection for Alpha is Binance’s decision, and no market maker can guarantee it, or any later spot or futures listing. What the desk controls is whether the token’s market is ready when the attention arrives. EchoTrade sets out its approach in more detail in its guide to choosing a market maker for Binance Alpha launches.

Why does a market maker offer launch advisory?

After 2,500 launches, the desk is in daily contact with exchange listing teams, auditors, launchpads, tokenomics firms and marketing agencies. That network has turned into a second part of the business.

Alongside market making, EchoTrade offers launch advisory for the whole project: which exchanges to apply to and in what order, how the vesting and unlock calendar will meet the order book, how to coordinate the listing date with announcements, and which partners to bring in at each stage.

For a founder launching for the first time, knowing the right companies and partners does two things. It makes the launch as strong as it can be, because each part of it (exchanges, audit, launchpad, marketing) is handled by people who have done it many times before. And it saves a large part of the budget, because the project avoids paying for the wrong services, the wrong venues or work that has to be redone later.

“EchoTrade has been the best Market Making services all round and in general amazing advisory, the only MM I refer projects to,” says JRcryptex, co-founder of CryptoBLDRS. Rio Consultancy, which has worked with EchoTrade as its dedicated market maker for the past year, says it has “confidently referred them to numerous clients who’ve all had the same excellent experience.”

What did 2,500 token launches teach the desk?

When we asked what separates the launches that hold up from those that fade, EchoTrade’s team kept coming back to four pieces of advice they give every founder.

1. The right market maker makes your life ten times easier. A launch has dozens of moving parts: exchange applications, listing agreements, inventory, announcements, unlocks. A market maker that has done it thousands of times knows the order things need to happen in and spots problems before they reach the chart. With the wrong one, the founder ends up managing the market maker on top of everything else.

2. Don’t chase the number of exchanges. Two exchanges that are well served are worth far more than ten that are barely covered. Every venue needs depth, a tight spread and someone watching the book, and exchanges keep measuring all three after listing; MEXC, for example, flags tokens whose average daily spread stays above 2% for 15 consecutive days. A thin market on ten venues looks worse to traders, and to the next exchange, than a healthy one on two.

3. Your marketing budget decides your launch strategy. The size of the audience a project can reach usually determines which exchanges make sense, how big the launch can be and how much liquidity it needs. A project with a small community and a big-exchange listing gets a quiet book on a loud venue. Sizing the launch to the audience, and growing both together, works better than the other way round.

4. Saving on service providers usually costs more in the end. The cheapest market maker, auditor or agency often turns out to be the most expensive line in the budget, which is why it pays to understand what a crypto market maker costs before comparing quotes. A broken first week, a failed audit or a campaign that reaches the wrong people is very hard to repair, and fixing it means paying a second provider to redo the work. Founders who choose partners on track record rather than price tend to spend less overall.

Where is crypto market making heading?

Looking at the crypto market making industry as a whole, it appears to be splitting in two. At the top, the largest market makers are turning into broader financial firms, with ETFs, securities licences, prediction markets and traditional asset trading. Further down, many smaller desks have left launch work for audits or advisory, or compete mainly on price.

That leaves a gap in the middle, and it is where most token projects actually sit: teams that need a partner who can take them from a first listing to a multi-exchange market, and stay with them after it. The firms that fill that gap are likely to be the ones that combine three things: a strong trading team, a wide exchange network, and the experience to advise founders before they make expensive mistakes.

Our read is that 2026 rewards preparation more than any year before it. Competition is lower, but the standards are higher. The cycle is no longer doing the work for weak launches, exchanges are measuring markets more closely, and buyers check depth before they buy. For founders, the choice of market maker has moved from a line item to one of the decisions that shapes the whole launch.