Market makers are a familiar term to many, but few truly understand how they make money. Today, we'll break down this topic thoroughly.

**What are market makers?**
Market makers are players in exchanges who continuously place orders, provide liquidity, and narrow the bid-ask spread. Their core tasks are threefold: ensure there's always someone to fill your orders, profit from controlling the spread, and occasionally influence short-term prices. These players could be official exchange teams, quantitative trading groups, or large individual investors.

**First method of earning: Spread arbitrage**
This is the most straightforward. Suppose BTC is quoted at 30,000 USDT; a market maker places a buy order at 29,990 and a sell order at 30,010. Every time someone executes a market order, they earn a 20 USDT spread. It may seem small, but with hundreds of high-frequency trades per day, the profits add up.

**Second method of earning: Pumping and dumping**
This is a bit shady. Market makers might deliberately place large buy orders to create hype and attract retail traders (pumping); they might also place large sell orders to trigger panic selling (dumping). Sometimes, they simply place orders without executing them, purely as psychological tactics—if the price moves favorably, they quickly cancel or adjust their orders to execute at better prices.

**Third method of earning: Arbitrage trading**
Taking advantage of price differences between different exchanges or correlations between different cryptocurrencies. For example, if BTC is 30,000 on Exchange A and 30,100 on Exchange B, there's an opportunity. This type of operation requires large capital and quick reactions, but the risks are relatively manageable.

Market makers not only maintain market liquidity but also create numerous trading opportunities—key is understanding their tactics.