Buy Into Crypto Presales? Alternative Platforms Unlock Early Trade Gains

The crypto industry is primarily fueled by big, organized players. These players include Venture Funds (VCs), Market Makers (MMs), and exchanges.

According to the Crypto & Blockchain Venture Capital (Q4 2024) report published by Galaxy, one of the World’s leading liquidity providers in the digital asset space, in all of 2024, venture capitalists invested US$11.5 billion into crypto and blockchain startups across 2153 deals. In Q4 2024, venture capitalists invested US$3.5 billion into crypto and blockchain-focused startups, a 46% surge quarter over quarter.

Another crucial player in the field is market makers. Broadly, a market maker could be an individual or business entity that provides liquidity to a crypto exchange by placing buy and sell orders. These market makers facilitate multi-billion-dollar trading volumes on a day-to-day basis.

Amber Group, one of the top-notch crypto market makers, has reportedly achieved over US$5 billion in daily market-making volumes since its inception, partnering with more than 2,000 institutional investors. Another player in the field, Wintermute—one of the largest market makers in the crypto space— recently recorded a US$2.24 billion daily trading volume.

Finally comes the third major player, the most well-known facilitator in this space, crypto exchanges. Binance ranked the largest spot crypto exchange based on 24-hour trade volume on January 30, 2025, registered a figure of nearly US$23 billion, followed by Zedcex with over US$16 billion and crypto.com with more than US$10 billion.

With all these players active in the field, the crypto industry is never short of energy to fuel it. But how do these players work? What are their exact operating strategies? And, how do they accommodate retail investors in their scheme of things, if at all?

The Functioning Mechanism of the Three

Venture Funds

Like any venture capitalist in any other industry, crypto venture capital firms are a group of investors with pooled resources who invest early in a project, judging the project by its viability, growth potential, and expected ROI.

VCs often diversify their portfolio with different projects to mitigate their risk. Once the project gains traction and garners momentum—resulting in a substantial retail demand—VCs take an exit on exchanges by selling their holdings.

Market Makers

Market Makers work differently. They work in a fashion comparable to ‘Arbitrage’ in the traditional finance world. In short, they secure tokens at pre-sale prices and sell them once trading starts. They work as an intermediary between a buyer willing to purchase a digital asset at a certain ask price and a seller ready to sell the asset to the market maker at a certain bid price.

The spread between the buying and selling price is the profit margin accrued by the market maker. The market dynamics are such that had there been no market maker, the transaction would be delayed until the buyer willing to purchase an asset at a specific price could find themselves a seller ready to sell at that precise price.

Although market makers act as intermediaries between buyers and sellers, they are not to be confused with crypto exchanges.

 Crypto Exchange

A crypto exchange facilitates trades and makes money by taking a percentage on every trade. But, the crucial thing to remember here is that crypto exchanges do not usually charge the same quantum of fees to all traders. Typically, they operate with a layered fee structure where traders bringing more volume to the exchange get to have lower fees. It is a way to incentivize large traders since exchanges benefit from liquidity and volume, facilitating price movements.

Where Does a Retail Investor Fit in?

Altogether, these large players active in the crypto space bring their pros and cons. A VC investor gets in the market before an ordinary player can have their hands on it; a Market Maker makes its presence inevitable for a retailer to secure a trade at a certain price. And an exchange always incentivizes large trade.

However, there have emerged players like Coin Terminal that help ordinary retail investors to be at par with their institutional counterparts.

Coin Terminal, for instance, offers opportunities to buy high-potential digital assets during their pre-sales along with investors like Binance Labs, Samsung NEXT, Arthur Hayes, and many more. It keeps the space low-barrier for ordinary investors with features like ‘Open Access,’ which allows anyone to participate in token launches without holding or staking platform-specific tokens, and ‘Buy Now, Pay Later,’ enabling regulated retail investors to access opportunities without the usual entry barriers seen on other platforms.

The crypto space was built to be free from the pressure of cost-bearing intermediaries and the monopoly of large centralized entities. Although there are participants like Exchanges, Market Makers, and VCs who benefit from early access, large trade volume, and traffic, it is good to see alternative options like Coin Terminal emerging fast to make the space accessible, inclusive, and equitable for all.