Market, Limit, and Stop Orders

The order type determines the conditions under which you buy or sell a crypto asset. A market order focuses on matching quickly with existing counter-orders, while a limit order is based on a price boundary you set. A stop order is activated when a specific condition is met. None of them guarantee profit on their own; knowing the difference between them prevents you from making a different transaction than what you intended on the purchase screen.

First, read the trading pair correctly

In the BTC/TRY pair, BTC is the asset you are buying or selling, and TRY is the currency in which the price is expressed. If you enter a price of 3,000,000 TL per BTC and a quantity of 0.01 BTC, the transaction amount, excluding commission, will be 30,000 TL. On some screens, the amount is entered as BTC, while on others, it is entered as the amount of TL to be spent. Checking the unit written next to the number is the first step.

The direction of the buy and sell buttons is also important. In BTC/TRY, buying means spending TL to acquire BTC; selling means giving BTC to receive TL. The available balance in your account may be lower than the total balance due to open orders. The amount reserved for an order may not be used in another transaction until the order is canceled or the transaction is completed. This does not mean that the balance has disappeared.

How does a market order execute?

A market order attempts to match with the best available counter-orders at that moment. Buy orders use sell orders, and sell orders use buy orders. The last transaction price seen on the screen is not the price at which your entire order will execute. If there is not enough quantity at the best level, the remaining part of the order goes to subsequent prices. The platform’s price protection rules may also affect the limits of the transaction.

For example, you want to buy 10 tokens. If there are 4 tokens at 100 TL and 6 tokens at 102 TL on the sell side, you will pay a total of 1,012 TL. The average price is 101.20 TL. Commission may be applied separately to this amount. When placing a market order, simply multiplying the initial price by 10 yields 1,000 TL and makes the real cost appear lower. The difference can grow, especially in shallow markets.

What does the boundary protect in a limit order?

A limit buy order allows for buying at your set price or lower. A limit sell order allows for selling at your set price or higher. For example, for a token you want to pay a maximum of 100 TL for, you can place a 100 TL limit buy order. If the market stays at 103 TL, your order may not execute. The price limit is not a guarantee of time or execution.

If your limit price can match immediately with existing counter-orders, the order may execute without waiting. Therefore, not every limit order is automatically considered a market maker order. A market maker refers to the side of the transaction that adds pending liquidity to the order book; a market taker refers to the side that uses existing liquidity. If the platform’s maker and taker commissions are different, how the order executes will affect your fee.

Partial execution and open orders

If you want to buy 20 tokens at 100 TL but only 8 tokens are being sold at that price, your order may be partially filled. The remaining portion of 12 tokens will wait or be canceled depending on the selected order duration. The phrase “partially filled” in the order history does not mean the entire transaction failed. The 8 tokens you bought may now be in your balance.

Canceling the order does not take back the portion that has already been executed. While sending a cancellation request, a new match may also occur; check the transaction history for the definitive result. Seeing your open orders before placing a new one prevents accidentally buying or selling the same amount again. The quantity, price, and commission rows in the executed transactions section are the basis of the final calculation.

The difference between stop-market and stop-limit

A trigger level is determined in a stop order. Stop-market sends a market order when the condition is met. Stop-limit creates a limit order when the condition is met. In a two-price screen, the stop price specifies when the order will be triggered, and the limit price explains at what price boundary the transaction can be made. Do not think of these as a repetition of the same field.

Hypothetically, imagine you have set a 90 TL trigger and an 89 TL limit sell for a token you bought at 100 TL. When the trigger occurs, a sale can be made to buyers at 89 TL or above. However, if the market rapidly drops to 85 TL and no suitable buyers remain, the limit order may wait. If stop-market had been used, execution would have been more prioritized, but the sale price could have formed below 90 TL. The conclusion “I set a stop, the loss will stay at exactly this amount” is therefore not certain.

Based on which price is the trigger made?

Depending on the platform and the product, the last transaction price, index price, or mark price can be used. This distinction is especially important on derivative screens. If the line you follow on the chart is different from the price that triggers the stop order, the order may activate at a different moment than you expect. Compare the trigger source on the order creation screen with the platform’s explanation.

A sell order in the spot market and a position closing order in futures are also not the same. In derivatives, there may be a “reduce-only” option intended only to reduce the existing position. The names and operations of these options vary by platform. Before assuming a button you learned on one product works with the same result on another, understand which balance or position it affects.

What do order duration options do?

A good-till-canceled order can remain open until you cancel it or its conditions are completed. There are also options that take the immediately executed part and cancel the rest, and options that cancel the whole if the entire order does not execute immediately. You may see their English abbreviations as GTC, IOC, and FOK, respectively. Not every platform offers all options.

A post-only option may be available for those who only want to add liquidity to the order book. If the order matches the counterparty immediately, the platform may reject it or change it according to its own rules. This option does not make a price prediction; it limits how the order will be placed. While targeting lower commissions, one must also account for the possibility of the order not being created or executed at all.

A quick transaction calculation before confirmation

Hypothetically, when you buy 0.01 BTC at 3,000,000 TL, the gross amount is 30,000 TL. If the commission is 0.10 percent and is deducted from TL, you pay an additional 30 TL. If the commission is deducted from BTC, you may receive 0.00999 BTC at the same rate. The platform’s deduction unit changes the result. Check the amount to be received, the amount to be spent, and from which balance the commission will be deducted together.

In the final check, the trading pair, direction, order type, quantity, price, trigger source (if any), and total cost should describe the same plan. After the transaction, rely on the executed records, not the estimation screen. Thus, you can understand what happened in case of the order waiting, being partially filled, or a different average price forming.

Sources

• Coinbase: market, limit, and stop orders
• Coinbase Help: order options
• Investor.gov: basic order types