Order Book

Glossary · Market Structure

An order book is an exchange's live list of resting buy orders (bids) and sell orders (asks) at each price. Price moves when market orders consume one side faster than it refills. Reading the book shows where real liquidity sits — and where thin spots let price slip fast.

"The book is everyone's cards face-up on the table — trouble is, half of them are bluffing."

Bids stack below the current price, asks above; the top of each stack is the best bid and best ask, and the gap between them is the spread. On BTC at a major venue you might see $5–10M resting within 0.1% of mid; on a small alt, a $50k market order can move price 1%. Watch how levels refill after they're hit — that tells you more than any static snapshot.

The book is the most manipulated data on the exchange. Big 'walls' get placed to scare you and pulled milliseconds before price touches them — spoofing is illegal in regulated markets and routine in crypto. Trust executed trades over resting orders: pair the book with the tape and CVD, and treat any wall that keeps stepping away from price as theatre.

The top of each book: best bid and ask on nine exchanges

Related jargon

Questions

What is Order Book in crypto trading?

An order book is an exchange's live list of resting buy orders (bids) and sell orders (asks) at each price. Price moves when market orders consume one side faster than it refills. Reading the book shows where real liquidity sits — and where thin spots let price slip fast.

How would a trader say it?

The book is everyone's cards face-up on the table — trouble is, half of them are bluffing.

Part of the Crypto Jargon glossary — every term, decoded the way a trader would say it.

Crypto Jargon

Live numbers load with JavaScript and refresh every few minutes; the text above is the page at build time.