Market Order
An order to buy or sell a digital asset immediately at the best available current price.
What is Market Order?
A market order executes instantly at prevailing prices from the order book, prioritizing speed over price certainty. On Coinbase, placing a market buy for $100 of BTC fills at the lowest asks available, potentially spanning multiple levels if volume is insufficient at the top. These are always taker orders, removing liquidity and incurring higher fees, like 0.5% on some exchanges.
In volatile markets, market orders risk slippage; for example, a large sell might execute below expectations. Protection collars, like Coinbase’s 10% limit, prevent excessive slippage. Unlike limit orders, market orders guarantee execution but not price.
Related Terms
Bitcoin Block Reward
The amount of newly created Bitcoin awarded to miners for successfully adding a new block to the blockchain.
Treasury Bills (T-Bills)
Short-term U.S. government debt securities with maturities from 4 to 52 weeks, sold at a discount and maturing at face value.
Turing Complete (Ethereum)
The ability of Ethereum’s programming environment to compute any function given sufficient resources.
Settlement Upon Payment
Immediate finalization of transactions upon initiation in digital systems.
Yield Farming in DeFi
Strategy of lending or staking digital assets in DeFi protocols to earn rewards, often compounded.
FUD
An acronym for "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt," referring to the spread of negative or misleading information to influence perceptions and behavior in the digital asset market.