Investomania, my take on liquidity desk is that it is funded by a combination of mining and buying from other exchanges, The website doesn't say that, it says "funded by mining" however a look at quarterlies suggest buying of bitcoin as part of liquidity operations then selling at a margin.
The competitive advantage they have is the fact that they are a miner (have access to coins), low counterpart risk (as a listed company, more trusted i suppose by big players etc **I, exchanges and smaller players etc ATM operators), they offer short term credit terms (further margin here), real time API (which i presume operates by looking at what they can buy on market + own holdings ten offering terms to customer).
I could be wrong on that, just my educated guesswork, but if true then a 2% margin on $2,500,000 per month nothing too exciting ($600K per annum profit), but Zhenya says he sees big growth potential here, ie $25,000,000 per month = $6M per annum etc etc.
I think as part of the eco-system it is serving an important part for other bitcoin businesses.
DCC Price at posting:
10.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
