We are pointing out that it is a BS exchange offering a BS product.
And you are right to stay away until bid/ask spreads tighten but they never will because short term volatility is often easy to predict.
Anyone placing a limit order that is even slightly badly priced is quickly picked off and the spread widens again.
This is why the market makers (more correctly bookmakers) bid/ask prices are so wide, they can not make money with a tight spread.
You're calling it a BS product with no justification. You don't see a need for it, great, don't trade it. We all need to be humble enough to realize that just because we don't see a use for something doesn't mean that there is no use!
I'm guessing it's been a while since you're logged in there, but spreads are usually 6 points on the products I trade during market hours, which is much higher than I'd like it to be but hardly usurious. And again as I've pointed out over and over
YOU TOO CAN MAKE A MARKET!!!! If the spreads are usurious or there is some kind of "picking off" that the MM can engage in to make profits you feel they shouldn't, then why aren't you taking advantage of that instead of complaining about it being unfair?
By the way, my experience is that the GAIN owned MM has a very naive algo that completely ignores other orders. I wish they'd "pick off" my orders inside the bid/ask, but they don't. And the only one doing any "picking" of non-market maker bids/offers inside the spread in my experience is me.
If you want to have a serious discussion about binary options pricing theory and how to mitigate risk I'd be happy to do that as soon as you dispense with the ever shifting argument that Nadex is somehow bad despite the fact that I've shown every one of your assertions to be incorrect, unsupported, or irrelevant. The truth is that the best way to deal with laying off risk for a binary options MM is to have a greater dispersion of outstanding contracts. Taleb has a good section on this in his book Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options (another guy I grudgingly pay attention to!) The current wide spread is a direct result of the small size of the MM's order book across products and strikes. As they get more volume across products and strikes, they will be able to provide smaller spreads and still make money; it's incorrect to say that "they cannot make money on a tight spread". Again, hence my interest in dispelling the haters out there who start with a gut feel that Nadex must be bad, then come up with ever more ridiculous reasons to justify that gut feel when they're asked to justify it. At some point, one would think it would be easier and make you look less foolish to simply acknowledge that your initial gut feel might not have been fully fleshed out, and upon further investigation you realize you were incorrect.