How do the exchanges make money?

[gleetree]

Apart from mt.gox (and bitcoinica) how do the other exchanges make any money?
Intersango now charge 0.6% per transaction (I think) and in GBP they've moved 255,621GBP in the last month - this is approx 1500 GBP profit. Double this for both sides of the transaction and you have 3000GBP in 1 month. This is the second most popular exchange currently.
How can any exchange survive on this or lower (shared between all staff members and covering costs)?
I could get a job as a cleaner and earn more than this.
Are they all relying on early adoption of bitcoin?

[Kluge]

Dunno about others, but here's Gox's report:



5m Yen = ~$60.8k

60.8*12=$729.6k

So they operated at a pretty big loss last year, but that was with that enormous hack and sending out a TON of free Yubikeys. We'll see how they fare through this year. (ETA: Though, maybe the USD & BTC revenue are separate?? Perhaps they held the 52.4k BTC profit, which'd amount to something like $250k on top of the $337k USD profit, so ~$590k total profit, possibly -- still a big loss)

Looking at Gox's numbers, it doesn't seem like to far a stretch to assume no exchange operates with healthy profits unless it's a one-man operation on very cheap infrastructure shoestring operation.

[koin]

are there fees for accepting and sending wires?

[Kluge]

are there fees for accepting and sending wires?

Not at Gox, at least, but you do have to pay whatever your bank charges.

[Sergey (imcex.com)]

We are not making any money. And it seems like it won't change for the next few months.
But we consider Bitcoin services worth to invest in. And we will be giving further support to IMCEX exchange and related projects.

[Nefario]

Intersango now charge 0.6% per transaction (I think) and in GBP they've moved 255,621GBP in the last month - this is approx 1500 GBP profit. Double this for both sides of the transaction and you have 3000GBP in 1 month. This is the second most popular exchange currently....
How can any exchange survive on this or lower

Sorry, you made a mistake there, that number isn't profit, thats called revenue. And because an exchange doesn't run on air those costs have to come out of that revenue.

I believe that the term "shoestring" applies, and that to a large extent all businesses would probably make more cleaning streets or toilets for min. wage than running their own business, at least in the beginning.

You have to remember how quickly the bitcoin economy is growing, about 1 year ago it was valued at about 10K USD, now it's over 40Million USD, that is some amazing growth.

[shykull]

The same way all exchanges makes money, different price of sell and buy. Usually they sell higher than they buy.

[Sovereign Investor]

Exchangers are not charitable organizations--they're businesses with the intent of making profits.  They buy digital currency at lower costs and sell at higher prices.