When I click on the market, to look at the prices, I see a different number than when I click buy and sell.
Why does the price change when I buy or sell my cryptocurrency?
The price you see depends on whether you’re buying or selling. You will buy from the prices showing in red above and when you sell you will sell from the prices showing in green.
Let’s compare the prices in the Order table with the price showing in the Trade table.
It’s important to understand that the best price is for a specified number (amount) of coins.
Let’s assume it’s a quiet market, not a lot of trading at the moment, so your trade isn’t affected by other customers. You want to purchase 99,000 of these cryptos.
48,897.40 of your order would be filled at 1.6100 (99,000 – 48,897.40 = 50,102.60)
50,000.00 of your order would be filled at 1.6200 (50,102.60- 50,000 = 102.60)
100 of your order would be filled at 1.75 (102.60 – 100 = 2.60)
2.60 of your order would be filled at 1.80 (2.60 – 2.60 = 0.00)
In the real world, not a hypothetical the price and amount of tokens at that price are constantly fluctuating as market orders are filled.
If you wanted to buy 10,000 of these crytos you might think that you will definitely get the price. Remember there are potentially thousands of customers trading at any given moment. If multiple customers do a market order buy just before or just as you do your market buy it is possible that some or even all of the coin availablle at that price will be gone. It is possible that you won’t get any coins at that price or you could get a portion of your order filled at that price and the remainder of your order would then fill at the next available price, etc.