Order Books and Market Depth: What They Are and Why They Matter
The order book shows every open buy and sell order on an exchange. Here's how to read it, and why market depth affects the price you actually get.
Every exchange, including Bitval, runs on an order book, a live list of every open buy and sell order waiting to be matched. Here's how to read one and why it matters for the trades you place.
What an Order Book Shows
An order book lists buy orders (bids) and sell orders (asks) at every price level where someone has placed a limit order. Bids sit below the current market price, asks sit above it, and the gap between the highest bid and lowest ask is called the spread. Watching the order book shows you exactly what other traders are willing to pay or accept right now, not just the last traded price.
What "Market Depth" Means
Market depth refers to how much volume sits at each price level in the order book. A market with deep liquidity has large orders stacked close to the current price, so a trade can execute without moving the price much. A thin order book has less volume at each level, meaning a single large order can push the price further than expected as it works through fewer available orders.
Why Depth Affects Your Execution
This connects directly to the order types covered elsewhere: a market order fills against whatever is sitting in the book, so in a thin market it can execute at a noticeably worse average price than the one you saw before placing it. A limit order avoids this by only filling at your specified price, but it may not fill at all if the book never reaches that level. Checking depth before placing a large order gives you a sense of how much the price might move as your order fills.
How to Use This in Practice
Before placing a sizable order, glance at the order book to see how much volume sits near the current price on both sides. If the book looks thin, breaking a large order into smaller pieces, or using a limit order instead of a market order, can reduce the impact on the price you end up paying.
Where to See This
Bitval's order book is visible directly on the trading interface for both spot and futures markets. If you want to see how this looks in practice, you can check the order book on Bitval here.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
