For spot trading, currently 2 types of orders are available: market and limit orders. This article will explain the differences and uses of both these order types. Another way of thinking about these order types is maker and taker. Market makers create the orders through limit orders that the takers will buy through market orders.
Limit Orders
A limit order is an offer to buy or sell an asset at a certain price. This order is added to the orderbook and can be seen in the market overview by others. When the price of the asset hits that price level, your offer will be accepted and the order completes for the amount of the asset possible.
When creating a limit order, set the price at which to buy (below current price) or sell (above current price) and the amount of BTC you want to buy or sell. You can have multiple limit orders active at the same time. See also Advanced options below
An example: You place a buy order for 0.5 BTC at €20.000 per BTC. This means you want to buy €10.000 worth of bitcoin at that price. The BTC main price, determined by all the market participants, can move up or down and can eventually hit your order. Since you're buying, it probably should move down to hit the price where you want to buy your bitcoin. When this price is hit, it depends on how much is being bought at that price how much you actually get at that price. The amount of BTC you buy at that price from that order is the amount that order is filled. It can happen that the price does hit where you want to buy, but only shortly so that just 0.25 BTC is sold into your buy at €20.000. Your order will remain there until it is cancelled or fully filled.
Limit orders have a maker fee, which is often cheaper than a taker fee: this means that having limit orders is often cheaper, but you're not guaranteed to be able to buy all you want at a certain price if the price doesn't go there.
Market Orders
Market orders are for when you want to have a certain amount of the asset right now at roughly this price. A market order takes the best offers available in the orderbook and tries to fulfill your order at the best possible available price. For example, you want to buy €1.000 of BTC right now for roughly the current price of €20.000. A market order instantly takes the nearest orders in the orderbook that are offering to sell BTC until you have the amount you wanted, roughly 0.05 BTC.
Market orders are fast but depend on the orders that are currently available. It's possible to pay more than you preferred if the amount of orders around that price (Liquidity) is small and if your order size is very big. For market orders a taker fee is asked, which is often less cheap than a taker fee.
Stop orders
Stop orders are currently not available. We expect to implement this feature soon.
Advanced orders
Limit orders have some more advanced options that can be added. These are the execution option which can be set to either allow taker or post only. This is related to the type of fee you pay depending on how your order is executed when it hits the market.
Allow taker
A limit order that is placed around the current price has a chance to be executed as a (partial) market order: the current market is such that your order can be filled immediately, turning it into a taker position. This means for that part of the order that is filled as taker, you pay a taker (less cheap) fee. The allow taker execution setting allows this situation to happen, but is only relevant if you place your limit order price very close to the current market price of the asset. Turning the order into post only will make sure this will not happen.
Post only
By putting your limit order as post only, your order will not be allowed to be (partially) filled immediately as a taker position. This means that if the system detects your order can be seen as even a partial market order, the entire order is rejected. This setting makes sure your entire order will enter the orderbook as a limit order, so you will only ever pay a maker (cheaper) fee.