I believe liquidity pools like these have the potential of becoming even bigger than proof-of-work mining pools. The reason is because no expensive hardware is needed in order for people to join the pool. All you need is some available funds that you can use to provide liquidity with. [...]
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The pool software itself doesn't need any specialised hardware and will run quite happily on a Raspberry Pi or similar small board computer.
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I totally agree and can confirm that based on my own experience!
There's no need to invest in specialized hardware that can only be used for one thing (e.g. like SHA256 or Scrypt PoW miners).
You should take into consideration that the device which is running the bot consumes electricity, though.
My bot runs on a RaspberryPi that needs only 2 Watts.
The reward is shown on a per month basis. But effectively you get paid each minute you verify to the server that you have placed an order of amount x. Here's one example of my bot
2015/05/20-08:02:06 INFO: bittrex - balance: 1.18297875 rate: 0.30% ppm: 0.00041340 efficiency: 100.00% rejects: 0 missings: 0 - btc - ask: 198.4340 x 0.30% - obfuscatedAPIKEY
The value after "ppm: " shows you how much you earn per minute (payout per minute).
The funds are in my account at bittrex and under my control all the time. I allow the bot to place and cancel orders. That's all.
But apart from that I can do with the funds whatever and whenever I want!
...at the moment I provide liquidity with it and at the end of the month I will have made up to 18 NBT (=USD) with the 200 NBT I put to this use.
As soon as I don't want to continue providing liquidity, I stop the bot.
Regarding risks: as you see the 200 NBT are no longer 200 NBT, but 198.4340 NBT.
This is due to NBT having been used for hedging BTC. At the end of the month the net gain won't be (up to) 9%, but less.
I assume it will be profitable anyway. If it isn't I stop and wait for better offers in terms of pool rewards.
All you need is some money you can use to join the pool and some minutes to create an account at the exchange, download the bot and configure it.
You can already start the preparation by downloading a NuBits wallet (which look awesome) and syncing the block chain (which is comparably fast), because you need - like explained in the initial post an NBT address to receive pool payouts.