Also, conventions may need to be agreed upon before trading picks up in a particular market segment – in the context of the interbank market I am thinking of conventions like the establishment of certain reference rates that contracts can be based upon, such as the EURIBOR rates. Finally, only sufficient technological progress may make a market viable.
For instance, short-term repo markets were in the past difficult to establish because settlement was costly and time-consuming – this was much facilitated with the advent of fully computer-based real-time settlement with straight-through processing.