I'm sure I'm not alone on this, and I'm sure that any developer who has thought about it, has suffered a mild migraine attempting to think up of everything that such exchange would entail. This is to say that I recognize it's not a small project and It would take even a talented group quite some time to launch.

_{source: coinnounce.com}

Dreaming a little bit

I can totally imagine STEEM being a trading pair against Bitcoin, Litecoin, and other top names out there, and you might be surprised to know that such a thing is not so uncommon either. In other words, there are a few exchanges already that adopt such a tactic. This is the case with stellar and the waves platform, which I've had a chance to use a time or two and they work quite well.

What this does for the currency should be easy to discern. For instance, the demand for the tokens is very influenced by the trading pairs on exchanges, and this is without thinking of clever ways to incentivize users to hold STEEM themselves.

I know what you are thinking at the moment: Why think about such an unreachable goal? But this is where I think, and I say this respectfully, that there is nothing unreachable about it, and that my dream is not too crazy after all.

Stealing from Cryptobridge

If you've not explored shitcoins like I have (not that I recommend you doing so), then you might not be familiar with Cryptobride, but It might be enough to point out it's a DEX (decentralized exchange) built on top of Bitshares, yes, that Bitshares.

The project has flourished quite nicely if I may say so. Yes, it's true, it's mostly shitcoins with no volume and markets that have less liquidity than sand, but, Cryptobridge is doing just fine. How you ask? Well, real simple: Staking.

If you buy their tokens, and you stake them, you help support the DEX, and you get your well deserved ROI. In other words, locking up your tokens, very much in the same way you do a CD at a bank (legacy financial product), you are guaranteed a return in tokens, not in USD, which of course is nothing anyone can guarantee nor should.

What's key about this particular system is that it mirrors in many ways a Banking Legacy product, and it creates, almost magically, a use case for a token than otherwise would have absolutely no reason to exist. The speculative market of the Bridge token is exclusively driven by the idea of staking and nothing else, and for Cryptobridge this seems to work brilliantly.

All this to say that an exchange built on STEEM could be thought up with a similar incentive. Do you see where I'm going now? - The exchange could give it's users the ability to lockup their tokens, and thus give the exchange account more STEEM power to put to use and deliver the ROI it would certainly need to pay it's customers.

Where would the ROI come from you ask? Well, that is a whole different post, and no doubt lacks one single answer. However, it's not hard for me to imagine the exchange itself selling accounts using their excessive RC's, voting (assigning rshares) to increase their stake, being this second point very flexible indeed.

The exchanges currently operating on STEEM do have some stake vested, but nothing too impressive mind you. This would, in theory, lock up more STEEM thus decreasing the availability and increasing its price.

Stealing from Binance

Now this particular exchange is very known and I doubt anyone who is participating of cryptos does not know a thing or two about it. In the short life Binance has, it's grown to be the largest exchange in the world and not only that, but also dwarf the earnings of gigantic legacy banking institutions. All this to say, they know how to run a business and how to make profit, hence why I think stealing some ideas from them is probably a wise choice.

So, How do they use their magical BNB tokens? One word: Discounts. Yes of course you can "buy things" with it, send it to your friends and all the other things they list on there, but let's face it, Who does that? The only reason why I've ever bought them was to trade on Binance with a discount.

Now, do you see where I'm going? I think it's pretty obvious by now. A STEEM centric exchange could offer discounts on all transactions payable in STEEM, to holders of STEEM. This way the exchange could also secure some nice revenue, and give a great incentive to speculators to own some coins themselves.

An important thing to point out however, would be that for this to make sense, it would be also crucial to have other trading pairs besides STEEM/(insertcoin), as to get STEEM nose in every nook and cranny of demand any speculator might desire.

"Wanna trade some LTC/BTC ?..... Do it on STEEMCHANGE, it's cheaper if you hold STEEM, and if you publish the transaction on your STEEM account you can win little upvote rebates"

A man can dream, but another one can build

Who knows, maybe there is someone already building such a thing and in a few months I'm going to be jumping on my chair screaming "I knew it!". But, if your mind is racing, especially if you are a dev who is not afraid of a crazy project thengood!, that makes me smile, and that's the best way for me to call it a night.

Much love my friends