Farming volume without paying for it
Most points farming is just paying the taker fee over and over. A market maker earns the same turnover from the other side of the book, which is the difference between a cost and close to a break-even.
Why the naive version is expensive
The obvious way to generate volume is to buy and sell repeatedly. Every one of those trades crosses the spread and pays the taker fee, so the campaign has a running cost proportional to the volume you generate, which is exactly the thing you are trying to maximise.
A market maker generates the same turnover from the passive side. It waits to be hit instead of hitting, which flips the fee from the expensive side of the schedule to the cheap one, and adds the spread rather than paying it.
- Round trips as a taker cost more the better they work.
- Maker fills earn the spread instead of paying it.
- The measurement that matters is your maker share, not your volume.
What the cost is
Making is not free either; it just fails differently. Instead of a fee per trade you pay adverse selection and inventory: the price moving against the position you were left holding. The honest way to compare campaigns is cost per million of turnover, which nets fees against realised and unrealised movement.
That number is not a constant. It swings with the market by tens of units hour to hour, so a single good day proves nothing. Judge a campaign over days, and against the alternative of paying taker fees for the same volume.
- Cost per million is the comparable unit: fees plus movement, divided by turnover.
- Hourly noise is large. Compare over days, not sessions.
- The benchmark is what the same volume would have cost as a taker.
Running it without giving up custody
A points campaign that requires handing over withdrawal rights is not worth any airdrop. The bot needs exactly two permissions: place an order and cancel one. On venues with a signature-based session key, that scope is enforceable at the protocol level rather than promised in a policy.
Funds stay in your own exchange account throughout. The key expires on its own and can be revoked at any moment, and stopping the bot does not require anyone's cooperation but yours.
- Trade-only key: place and cancel, nothing else.
- Funds never leave your account; there is no withdrawal path to abuse.
- Revocable at any time, with an automatic expiry as a backstop.
Choosing where to farm
Pick the market by arithmetic, not by which points programme looks most generous. A market whose spread does not clear the round-trip cost will lose money faster than any points allocation can repay, and the programmes that reward maker volume specifically are the ones where a maker has an edge in the first place.
- Check the spread against round-trip cost before checking the reward table.
- Prefer programmes that count maker volume or open interest, not raw trade count.
- Deep, busy books cost less to make on and reward more consistently.
Questions
Is market making a good way to farm points?
It is usually the cheapest way to generate the same turnover, because the fills come from the passive side of the book. The cost does not disappear, it changes form: instead of a fee per trade you carry adverse selection and inventory, which is generally the smaller of the two on a market with a workable spread.
Does a points bot need withdrawal access to my account?
No, and you should refuse any that asks. Placing and cancelling orders is the entire permission set required. On venues with signature-based session keys, that limit is enforced by the exchange rather than promised by the operator.
How do I compare two farming campaigns fairly?
Use cost per million of turnover: net fees against realised and unrealised price movement, then divide by the volume generated. Compare over days rather than sessions, because hourly variation is large enough to make a single session meaningless.
Will running a maker get my account flagged?
Providing genuine two-sided liquidity is the behaviour exchanges design maker rebates to encourage. What draws scrutiny is self-matching and wash-style patterns, which are a different activity and are not what a market maker does.