[GillBates666]

Charge some some small fee per transaction to pay for something worthwhile in society and that will limit the profitability of these billions of micro transactions as well.

All these big finance companies should just be public utilities. They provide little to no benefit to society. They create nothing. They siphon so much money. The cost of the instability/fragility they create is sent downstream to the taxpayer. What society purposely sign up for this?

[gpderetta]

Most exchanges have per trade fees, although many do offer rebates for market makers or liquidity providers.

[phendrenad2]

Really interested to learn those two terms - "market maker", "liquidity provider". I think I kinda understand the second one (traders who are bringing money from outside the market). Does anyone know where I can read more about this kind of thing?

[Misdicorl]

A market maker is an entity which isn't interested in the underlying assets at all. Their goal is to always end with a 0 asset, all cash balance sheet (over some small time interval). Their goal is to buy X at $100 and sell it at $100.01 a million times a day.

`Liquidity providing` is the side of the trade which had a `resting order` on the order book which traded against a new order (the liquidity taker). Various exchanges have various different fee schedules for your designation as a market maker, how much volume you do, whether you are taking or supplying liquidity, and what kind of order you are placing.

[lrem]

I'm pretty sure Wikipedia has you covered... But TL;DR: traders that always have a buy and sell transaction active, making sure the market allows to buy/sell instantly at any time.