Topic: Running a exchange is a very active job - page 3. (Read 1933 times)

Well at start it will be. But when robots are created then it wont be a problem anymore. Maintenance will just be the problem wirh upgrades and updates. If you will create an exchange one more problem is making it known.

I have no experience in back office of exchange but as a trader point of view I think yes running exchange is (or say should be) a full time job, 24 x 7 there must be some active staff members to monitor the activity of the exchange. Even not replying to a single support ticket can lead you to scam accusation section so exchanges have to stay attentive every time and make sure that train is running smoothly and passengers are enjoying the ride.

I don't think running an exchange website is a very active job. All you have to do is to set it up and do some maintenance along the way just like in any other business/website. The reason why we are using programming so that there would be codes that will automatically do the things like buying/selling altcoins. This is a very repetitive job so we need to set up an algorithm that'll do the job.

I think the only that are very active in an exchange site are the moderators and the support staff.

And I think more difficult for reaching new users than trying for improving the system. but it's not closing the possibilities if the site is having a good system will trying for get a sympathy for bitcoiners and wanna for joining in them with naturally.

if your starting an exchange with a team of less than 30 people. then expect issues and expect it not to run well.

this is because if you split the day up into 3 shifts of 8 hours work over 7 day. you would have 10 people working at any one time on 56 hour contracts each.

which usually doesnt work well because some people dont want to work weekends. so already you will need more relief support for weekends

anyway the daily tasks needed are

things like a decision maker (manager) who needs to over see all the staff and deal with issues outside of individual employees control.

you need finance trained people to promptly handle deposits/withdrawals inline with policies (usually regs)
you need someone who can handle chargebacks and wire reversals(scam attempts/ basic bank processing/account management)
you need network admin monitoring for issues and/or hackers
you need customer support

and then theres the staff not required to work around the clock, like advertising, graphic design, PR, legal, etc
along with the guys that can understand and specialise in the large investments and behind the scenes business VC stuff.

so if you think you can run a long term legit and sustainable exchange with less than 30 employee's then you are skimping (being light handed/running a skeleton crew) somewhere, which will negatively affect business at some point

Maybe he was waiting a answer like: "it's very easy to open a exchange and you will earn a lot of money doing nothing"
because 9/10 people think bitcoin is a easy money and stuffs like that.


Nice reply @drawingthesun

You often begin alone before you starts to find peoples/empolyees to help.
And when you find those people to delegate tasks, it's to work on some others. Managing your team is also time consuming.
The hardest part is to deal with customers and issues. Yes, it's a full time job. If you want to succeed nowadays, you must go full time on it, and support pressure.

You've nailed it. The skill sets required to build and manage a successful exchange is not a task for a single person. Simply building a functional platform period is a massive under taking, set aside the operations side of it.

As part of your job running an exchange you will be:

- Building software.
- Maintaining that software.
- Actually still developing that software, developing really never finishes, if someone tells you it does then they don't know what they are talking about  and you should run away fast!
- Fix things when code and scripts stop working for various reasons:
-- Hardware failure.
-- Wallet lockup.
-- Fibre between servers down.
-- Upstream carriers experiencing problems.
-- Unforeseen issues where code behaves in an unexpected way.
- Keep on top of scammers and other issues.
- Keep on top of wallet security for all of your wallets.
- Keep up to date with tax obligations.
- Accounting.
- Legal issues.
- KYC laws. They may or may not apply.
- Deal with support issues, you will have many many support queries.
- And guess what, you can't fob off all support to some lowly paid employee because BAM! You're know entering the world of enterprise level security. (How to secure internal systems from employees)
- Working on version two of the software so you're still relevant in 6 months.

I work as a software engineer at a non exchange company and I also see the workload of system administrators.

All companies that rely heavily on engineering and software will need constant work, it's sit and forget for the investors only.

Running a piece of software on the internet that it supposed to be safe and secure whilst being maintainable is hard work.

Also you're not just running a piece of software, you're also running a business.

i know CEO of our local exchanger he's not busy since he has lot of workers in his company that handle everything on that exchanger,  he's just controlled his staff in order to make their service is stable, however they, owner spent lot of money and time when they created their exchanger in the begining, now they're just watching what they've created.

Maybe you are right, it's really time consuming. I was always wondering how much do they make per day though. I think not that much but I may be wrong of course.

Also I think that if you are owner of an exchange it's not necessary to spend your whole day working there. If you have enough profit you hire someone to do the hard work for you. )

It is a full time job.

Most of the work these days for those exchanger is to clear trollbox which is done by hired moderators however yes actually admin also have to be active not full day but may be 2-3 hour daily to check that all things working or not as required. Specially in case of server issues during DDOS attack may make admin more busy to fix it as soon as possible. But they seem to earn good amount from trading fee enough for them to spend few hours daily to keep their platform alive.

Except places like Yobit don't answer any support tickets.  In fact I don't call them tickets,  I call them impotent, strangled little cries for help.  OP is either very naive or very young or has a very limited understanding of how stuff works.

Why exactly did you open the thread?

Yes. it is really active, time consuming and difficult job. but as above members said. the hardest part for signature campaign is to setup everything first. once a exhange launched and coins listed then the big tasks done. but there is still a lot of works to do.

To prove op is correct, OP speculated exchanges owners are very busy, it is the obvious reason he post that.

running an exchange would certainly not be my idea of fun.

even if you have a script ticking away, you gotta worry about hacks, regulators coming after you, dimwit customers screwing up and blaming you. it would be a never ending assault.

Thanks for sharing a real time experience of involving with running an exchange. I like to hear more about this. So far, only assumptions I did have. More over, only in beginning days all business needs lot of works, over time we get practice to hard work.

Several weeks ago TuxExchange.com launched. I have been a team member since the beta tests, creating an exchange is certainly a very difficult job to do, it needs to be stable, secure and fast. Security is number one priority of course, but the uptime and the speed of the server are also important. Therefor I think TuxExchange will become big, our servers are super fast, we have a secure platform and support 2FA.