Thanks for the response!
You're welcome and Merry Christmas!
I was also wondering - since CLAM volumes & orderbook depths are somewhat low, would it make sense for "whales" to use the swap function?
Nooooooooo!!! Swap is more risky for Whales than it is for small traders... I strongly recommend big traders directly use XChange. (Cheaper and safer for large traders... I'll explain why shortly)
Swap is just a glorified market order tool for XChange. Thus, that same liquidity is going to apply to your trade.
How exactly does it work? Does it give convert your coins based on a flat fee + market rates for any amount, or is it simply automating market orders and thus subject to the same orderbook limitations as the spot CLAM market?
If you send Swap 500 CLAMS, Swap waits for the transaction to confirm, and then Swap makes a market trade of those 500 CLAMS. That basically means those CLAMS are going to be sold for the best price right away... whatever the best "Bid" is... they are going to get the CLAMS.
The Bitcoins are then withdrawn to the customer's desired Swap address. The miner fee is deducted from the total.
So, XChange charges a flat miner fee (0.0004 BTC) and Swap only charges the exact miner fee (it's deducted at the end). It usually makes more sense for small traders to use Swap than it does for them to use XChange.
Swap charges 1% + all XChange fees + real miner fee.
XChange charges 0.2% + flat miner fee.
RIP though, I remember the days of CLAM on polo where there seemed to be infinite liquidity
Life is better than it seems for CLAMS I swear haha
My recommendation is using a "Limit order" on the XChange books! Name your own price and wait for someone to swallow it up.
I've sold hundreds of thousands of CLAMS over the years and truthfully, I've been amazed at how fast my CLAMS get swallowed up on FreeBitcoins whenever I name a price that someone else thinks is reasonable!
I understand the desire to be able to go "in and out" near-instantly though without waiting to match your order with someone. We are working on it!!!