Hello

I have been developing a cross platform trader targeted at arbitrage across the more popular exchanges. At the moment it currently supports Bittrex, Poloniex and Yobit for trading and a Bittrex/Poloniex arbitrage engine (very rudimentary). Binance currently does not seem to allow sign ups hence i am only able to access public api which is not much use for trading or for arbitrage. Bitfinex poses a rather steep initial amount $10000, so for now i've put support for it on the back-burner. Over the next week I intend to add arbitrage bots for Polo/Yobit and Bittrex/Yobit and complete adding support for Localbitcoins thereby allowing users to both buy and sell bitcoins using the rather vast array of payment options available on that platform, some of which circumvent typical barriers : eg Western-Union , World-remit, Paypal and gift cards .... etc.

My current issue is monetization of the work I am doing on this trading software and other software projects I wish to bring in to the world. I have come across the following options :

1) ICO (popular solution but i do not see much benefit over the long term )
2) Direct Sales to users  (great in practice but makes it harder to build an eco-system)
3) Issuing a new crypto and then requiring any user who wants to use the software to hold a certain balance of the token in their exchange accounts (requires creation of said currency/token and may require maintenance of blockchain)

For the moment I am strongly inclined towards using option 3 as it is best suited for an eco-system, further if other developers like my idea and wish to be paid for their efforts similarly , they can use a budget proposal system join up and potentially get paid if users like their work. This option is also very appealing as it creates a platform for me to work on and release several other ideas that can use such a system.

So with this in mind, what is your opinion on the matter? Is my reasoning sound, and if not what would be a better approach in this situation?