Reference Glossary: Market and Trading Terms

Entry last verified June 2026. Terms specific to trading and market structure; protocol terms are covered in the main glossary.

Ask. The lowest price a seller is currently willing to accept.

Basis. The difference between a futures price and the spot price. Drives the arbitrage trade that generates much of the flow into spot products.

Bid. The highest price a buyer is currently willing to pay.

Depth. How much can be bought or sold within a given distance of the current price. The figure that determines execution quality, and considerably more informative than volume.

Funding rate. A periodic payment between holders of long and short perpetual futures positions, which keeps the contract price near spot. Sustained positive funding indicates crowded long positioning.

Liquidation. Forced closure of a leveraged position when collateral falls below a threshold. Executed as a market order, which is why cascades accelerate.

Maker. An order that rests on the book and adds liquidity. Charged less.

Market capitalisation. Price multiplied by circulating supply. Meaningful for deeply traded assets and misleading for thin ones.

Mid price. The midpoint between best bid and best ask. The reference point for measuring what you actually paid.

Open interest. The total value of outstanding derivative contracts. Rising open interest with rising price indicates leverage building; falling open interest during a move indicates positions closing.

Order book. The list of outstanding buy and sell orders at each price.

Perpetual future. A futures contract with no expiry, kept aligned with spot by the funding mechanism.

Slippage. The difference between the expected price and the price received. For most orders, larger than the trading fee.

Spread. The gap between best bid and best ask. Also used for the margin embedded in a simplified buy interface, which is a different thing and frequently larger.

Taker. An order that executes immediately against resting orders. Charged more.

Turnover. Volume divided by market capitalisation. More informative than volume alone, because it describes how much of the supply actually changes hands.

Volume. Value traded over a period. Historically inflated on smaller venues; figures from regulated platforms such as exchanges quoting a direct fiat pair are more reliable than aggregated totals.

Wash trading. Trading with oneself to inflate reported volume. Documented at scale on smaller venues and the reason adjusted volume metrics exist.