Order book is an electronic documentation of the buying and selling of assets on a trading platform such as a cryptocurrency exchange. Generally, an order book shows the appearance of a particular asset by recording buy and sell orders. Platforms that use electronic order books use a matching engine to automatically filter and fulfill buy and sell orders, either in whole or in part.
The order book contains different important information about an asset. First, it has a dedicated section for buyers and sellers. Next, there is a bid and ask section. Here, “ask” represents a sell order while “bid” represents a buy order.
Bids are placed on the left while requests are placed on the right of the book. Both sides have buying and selling prices from various traders. Bid is usually represented in green while ask is represented in red.
Tables, line charts, bar charts, and other visualization methods show the interactions between buyers and sellers. Also, Japanese candlestick charts accompany the order book to show current and past market status and to help traders make informed trading decisions. In most cases, the order book contains only orders that are set to be filled using a trader’s special price.
This type of order is known as a limit order. Orders that are placed to be filled using the current market price are called market orders. The highest bid price and lowest ask price appear at the top of the order book. The difference between these two prices is known as the bid-ask spread. It shows the forces of supply and demand.
An Order Book can also be called a list of buy and sell prices available in the market today, and one can buy or sell Bitcoin using the prices listed there. The Market Buy order book is a complete list of Bitcoin purchase requests with the amount of Bitcoin and the price offered. While the Market Sell Order book is a list of Bitcoins sold, complete with the number of Bitcoins and the asking price.