Liquidity shows how easily you can buy or sell crypto without changing its price too much. High liquidity means plenty of buyers and sellers, so trades happen quickly and at stable prices.
Liquidity is how much you can buy or sell without moving the price. On a liquid market the order book is deep. There are large orders close to the current price on both sides, so a $1 million buy fills at almost the price you saw. On a thin market the same order eats through the book and you pay more with every fill. That extra cost is called slippage.
Two numbers tell you most of the story. The spread is the gap between the best bid and the best ask. On bitcoin at a large exchange it is often a fraction of a cent per dollar. The depth is the value of orders within 1% or 2% of the price. CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap publish both for every market, and this list uses them.
A market maker is a firm that keeps orders on both sides of the book all day. It earns the spread and takes the risk of holding coins. Exchanges pay market makers lower fees, or even rebates, to keep their books deep. Some exchanges run their own market-making desks as well.
The firms that describe themselves as crypto market makers on their own websites include Wintermute, GSR, B2C2, Cumberland, Flow Traders, Keyrock, Flowdesk and DWF Labs. Token projects also hire market makers to keep a market in their coin, which is why a small coin can look liquid on launch day and thin a month later.
You cannot see who placed an order, but you can see what they leave behind. Watch the depth chart on the exchange, or the 2% depth on CoinGecko, at different hours. Liquidity that vanishes at weekends or during a fast move is a sign that one firm is doing most of the work. On chain, wallets labelled as market makers on Arkham or Nansen show large transfers to and from exchanges before listings and large sales.
None of this predicts price. It tells you how much size a market can take, which is the question that matters when you trade large.
Sources: CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap market depth data. The market makers' own websites, Checked 25 September 2026.