Setting Crypto Order Types Correctly: Market, Limit and Stop-Loss Compared

A market order buys immediately at the next best price available in the market. A limit order buys only at the price you set yourself, or better, and if that price never materializes, nothing happens at all. A stop-loss is not a third way of buying but a trigger: it sends an order into the market only once a price you have defined is touched. These three tools decide, on every purchase and every sale, whether you end up with the price you saw on screen. Anyone who buys Bitcoin through an app and never opens any screen other than the big buy button pays extra in three places: on the trading spread, on the fee tier and on the execution itself. Together that adds up to a markup most investors never quantify, because it appears nowhere as a line item. What an Order on a Crypto Exchange Actually Is An order is a binding instruction to your trading venue to buy or sell a certain quantity of a coin. Every order contains three pieces of information: direction, quantity and the condition under which it may be executed. That third item is what separates the order types from one another. There is no person on the other side searching the exchange on your behalf. What your order meets is a lis...