What happens in Bitcoin Exchange?
Emery Understanding Bitcoin Exchanges
Bitcoin exchange platforms match buyers with sellers. Like a traditional stock exchange, traders can opt to buy and sell bitcoin by inputting either a market order or a limit order. When a market order is selected, the trader is authorizing the exchange to trade his coins for the best available price in the online marketplace. With a limit order set, the trader directs the exchange to trade coins for a price below the current ask or above the current bid, depending on whether they are buying or selling.
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Decentralized Exchanges
Decentralized bitcoin exchanges are those that are operated without a central authority. These exchanges allow peer-to-peer trading of digital currencies without the need for an exchange authority to facilitate the transactions.
There are a number of benefits to decentralized exchanges. First, many cryptocurrency users feel that decentralized exchanges better match the decentralized structures of most digital currencies themselves; many decentralized exchanges also require less personal information from their members than other types of exchanges. Second, if users transfer assets directly to other users, that eliminates the need for the transferring of assets to the exchange, thereby reducing the risk of theft from hacks and other fraud.
Special Considerations
Fees
Making deposits and withdrawals comes at a price, depending on the payment method chosen to transfer funds. The higher the risk of a chargeback from a payment medium, the higher the fee. Making a bank draft or wiring money to the exchange has a lesser risk of a chargeback compared to funding your account with PayPal or a credit/debit card where the funds being transferred can be reversed and returned to the user upon his/her request to the bank.
Bitcoin Wallets
Note that a bitcoin exchange is different from a bitcoin wallet. While the former offers a platform through which bitcoin buyers and sellers can transact with each other, the latter is simply a digital storage service for bitcoin holders to store their coins securely. To be more technical, bitcoin wallets store private keys which are used to authorize transactions and access the bitcoin address of a user. Most bitcoin exchanges provide bitcoin wallets for their users, but may charge a fee for this service.
Makers and Takers
Online bitcoin marketplaces usually designate bitcoin participants as either makers or takers. When a buyer or seller places a limit order, the exchange adds it to its order book until the price is matched by another trader on the opposite end of the transaction. When the price is matched, the buyer or seller who set the limit price is referred to as a maker. A taker is a trader who places a market order that immediately gets filled.
Example of a Bitcoin Exchange
For example, on a bitcoin exchange, three coin sellers are asking for BTC/USD 2265.75, BTC/USD 2269.55, and BTC/USD 2270.00. A trader who initiates a market order to buy bitcoins will have their order filled at the best ask price of $2265.75. If only five bitcoins are available for the best ask and 10 coins are available for $2269.55, and the trader wants to buy 10 at market price, the trader's order will be filled with 5 coins @ $2265.75 and the remaining 5 @ $2269.55.