Spot trading
7 min · 1 of 2
Buying the asset itself, at today's price, and owning it afterwards. Start here — it is the only kind of trading where you cannot lose more than you put in, and it is the only kind OpeniBank offers.
What spot trading is
Spot trade
An exchange of one asset for another, right now, at the current price. You end up holding the asset itself.
“Spot” means on the spot — settled immediately, as opposed to an agreement about some future date. Changing money at an airport kiosk is a spot trade.
Example
You hold 8,000 USDT. BTC is trading at 80,000. You buy 0.1 BTC for 8,000 USDT. After the trade: 0 USDT · 0.1 BTC The BTC is yours. Nothing expires and nothing is owed.
What can and cannot go wrong
The price can fall, and your holding is worth less. If it fell to zero you would lose everything you spent.
The property that matters
You cannot lose more than you put in. There is no mechanism by which a spot purchase costs you money you never committed. This is why beginners should start here, and why it is the only kind of trading OpeniBank offers.
Example — the worst case
Bought 0.1 BTC at 80,000 for 8,000 USDT. Price falls to 60,000 → holding worth 6,000 → down 2,000 Price falls to 0 → holding worth 0 → down 8,000, and no further Your maximum loss is 8,000, whatever happens next.
The order book
A market is a queue of offers. Buyers post bids. Sellers post asks. The gap between the best of each is the spread.
| Side | Price | Size | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ask | 79,925 | 0.42 | Somebody will sell you BTC at 79,925 |
| — | spread 5 | The gap you cross to trade immediately | |
| Bid | 79,920 | 1.10 | Somebody will buy your BTC at 79,920 |
Market order
Fills immediately against the best prices available. You take liquidity from the book, so you pay the taker fee.
Limit order
Joins the queue at your price and waits. It may never fill. If it rests on the book and someone trades against it, you provided liquidity and pay the lower maker fee.
Watch out
A market order on a thin book can fill worse than the price on screen. The displayed price is the top of the queue, not a promise for your whole size. Check the Sum column before sending anything large. (OpeniBank also caps how far a market order may travel — see the trading guide.)
Try it
Open the terminal and find the spread. Click a price in the book and watch it fill the order ticket — nothing is sent until you press the button.
Open the terminalFees
Example — what a trade actually costs
Buy 0.1 BTC at 80,000 with a market order. Order value 8,000.00 USDT Taker fee 0.20% 16.00 USDT (taken as 0.0002 BTC) You receive 0.0998 BTC Sell it again with a market order and you pay 0.20% again. The price has to rise about 0.4% before the round trip breaks even.
The rates above are the ones in force at the time of writing. The Fees page reads the current rates straight from the matching engine, market by market.
This is why frequent trading is harder than it looks. The fee is small on any one trade and large across a hundred of them.
What you should take away
- A spot trade leaves you owning the asset.
- Your maximum loss is what you spent, and never more.
- Market orders take liquidity and pay the taker fee; resting limit orders pay the lower maker fee.
- Fees are charged on the way in and on the way out.