Buying & exchanges
Exchanges make their money in ways that are mostly disclosed and rarely displayed. This section is the vocabulary that lets you find the cost.
The headline fee is usually the smallest part of it. A maker taker schedule charges different rates depending on whether your order adds liquidity or removes it, so a market order and a limit order of the same size can cost different amounts. The spread, the gap between the best bid and the best ask, is a cost with no line item. Slippage is what happens when your order is bigger than the book at your price. Instant buy buttons bundle all three into one rate that can run to several percent, which is how the same platform manages to look cheap and expensive on the same day.
The section also covers the routes in and out: on ramps and off ramps between bank money and bitcoin, peer to peer marketplaces for the many countries where card and bank rails do not work, bitcoin ATMs for cash, and no KYC services for people who have decided what they are trading away.
Dollar cost averaging is here too, since it is the mechanism behind most recurring buy features, and the one entry in the list that describes a strategy rather than a charge.
38 terms. Last reviewed 2026-09-07.
Terms in Buying & exchanges
- Accepted identity documentAn accepted identity document is government-issued photo ID that a platform's verification partner can validate, and it must come from a country on the platform's own published list of accepted issuers.
- Account freezealso Account suspensionAn account freeze is an exchange switching off part or all of what your account can do, deposits, trading or withdrawals, while it runs a review you did not ask for.
- Banking providerA banking provider is the third-party bank, credit institution or payment firm where an exchange parks your fiat balance, in its own name and on your behalf.
- Bid-ask spreadalso SpreadThe bid-ask spread is the gap between the highest price a buyer will pay and the lowest price a seller will accept, and you pay half of it every time you cross.
- Bitcoin ATMalso BTMA bitcoin ATM is a cash kiosk that sells bitcoin on the spot for banknotes, at a double-digit percentage markup that no reputable online exchange would charge.
- Client money trustalso Client money accountA client money trust is the legal wrapper that makes the cash you deposit with an exchange your property, held for you at a bank rather than owned by the platform.
- Country of residenceYour country of residence is the country you live in and declare to an exchange, the single field that decides which entity serves you and which products you can use.
- Cryptocurrency exchangealso CEX, Centralized exchange, Crypto exchangeA cryptocurrency exchange is a company that holds your money and your coins on its own books, matching buyers and sellers internally and settling the result in its database.
- Decentralized exchangealso DEXA decentralized exchange swaps one token for another inside a smart contract, with no company holding the funds, no account, and no way to accept a bank transfer.
- Dollar-cost averagingalso DCADollar-cost averaging is buying a fixed amount of bitcoin on a fixed schedule, so the price you pay averages out instead of depending on one lucky day.
- Eligibility criteriaEligibility criteria are the conditions in an exchange's terms that you must meet before it will open an account: age, residence, valid contact details, and no place on a sanctions list.
- Exchange API keyAn exchange API key is a credential you generate to let a program trade, read or withdraw on your account without your password, under permissions you choose.
- Fiat depositA fiat deposit moves national currency from your bank into an exchange account, where it stops being your bank's liability and becomes a claim on the exchange.
- Fiat withdrawalA fiat withdrawal moves the national currency sitting in your exchange account to a bank account in your own name, and it is a payment transaction rather than a crypto transfer.
- Forked asset policyA forked asset policy is the clause in an exchange's terms that decides whether a coin created by a chain split ever reaches your account, and on what terms.
- Identity verificationalso ID verificationIdentity verification is the step where an exchange matches your photo ID and your face against the details you typed, and it can fail on geography alone.
- Instant buyalso Brokerage buyAn instant buy is the one-click purchase widget on an exchange, where the venue quotes you a single price and sells to you directly instead of matching you in the order book.
- Limit orderA limit order sets the worst price you will accept and waits, so it controls what you pay but offers no promise that the trade ever happens.
- Maker and taker feesalso Maker fee, Taker feeMaker and taker fees are the two prices an exchange charges for a trade: less if your order waits in the book, more if it takes an existing order out.
- Market manipulationMarket manipulation covers trading conduct that pushes a crypto-asset price to an artificial level or feeds the market false signals about supply, demand or price.
- Market orderA market order buys or sells immediately at whatever prices the order book is offering, which guarantees that the trade happens but never guarantees what it costs.
- Minimum trade sizealso Minimum order sizeMinimum trade size is the smallest order an exchange will accept, set by the operator in its fee schedule rather than by the bitcoin protocol.
- No-KYC exchangealso KYC-free exchangeA no-KYC exchange sells bitcoin without collecting your identity documents, which is legal in some places, prosecutable in others, and always a trade of price and recourse for privacy.
- Off-rampalso Fiat off-rampAn off-ramp converts bitcoin back into spendable national currency in your bank account, and it is the leg of the journey that fails most often for ordinary people.
- Omnibus accountAn omnibus account is a single wallet or bank account held in a platform's own name that pools many customers' bitcoin or cash, with an internal ledger recording who owns which share.
- On-rampalso Fiat on-rampAn on-ramp is any service that turns your national currency into bitcoin, and the hard part is the payment rail it accepts, not the coins it delivers.
- Order bookAn order book is the live list of every buy and sell offer waiting at each price on an exchange, and the price you see quoted is simply its top.
- OTC deskalso Over-the-counter deskAn OTC desk quotes a single price for a large bitcoin trade and settles it privately, off the public order book, so the purchase never moves the visible market.
- Peer-to-peer exchangealso P2P exchange, P2P marketplaceA peer-to-peer exchange is a marketplace where individuals trade bitcoin with each other directly, with the platform holding the coins in escrow while the buyer sends payment by whatever local method both agreed.
- Recurring buyalso Auto-buyA recurring buy is the exchange feature that executes a purchase for you on a schedule, pulling money from your bank on the day you picked without you logging in.
- SEPA zone requirementA SEPA zone requirement is an exchange rule that limits accounts to residents of the Single Euro Payments Area, and turns on your residential address and the country that issued your IBAN.
- SlippageSlippage is the difference between the price you were quoted and the price your order actually filled at, and it grows with order size and thin liquidity.
- Stop-loss orderalso Stop lossA stop-loss order sits dormant until the price falls through a level you picked, then fires a sell into whatever market exists at that moment.
- Trading pairA trading pair is the two assets an exchange quotes against each other, written base first and quote second, so BTC/EUR prices one bitcoin in euros.
- Unsupported assetAn unsupported asset is any coin or token a platform does not list for your account, which makes support a property of the venue and your jurisdiction rather than of the asset.
- Wash tradingalso Wash trade, Self-executionWash trading is a purchase and sale that leaves beneficial interest and market risk unchanged, because one trader, or a colluding group, acts as both the maker and the taker of the trade.
- Withdrawal feeA withdrawal fee is what an exchange charges to send your bitcoin out to your own wallet, and it is usually a flat amount rather than the real network cost.
- Withdrawal whitelistalso Address whitelistA withdrawal whitelist restricts an exchange account to sending coins only to addresses you approved in advance, so a stolen password cannot redirect your bitcoin anywhere new.
The other 13 sections
- BasicsWhat bitcoin is, what a satoshi is, and the handful of ideas the rest of the glossary is built on.
- Addresses & keysWhere coins get sent, what a private key actually controls, and how one seed produces thousands of addresses.
- Wallets & custodyHot, cold, custodial and multisig, and what each one changes about who can move your coins.
- Privacy & securityThe attacks that take people's bitcoin, and the habits and tools that stop them.
- Transactions & feesWhat a bitcoin transaction is made of, why it costs what it costs, and how to unstick one.
- Markets & investingMarket cap, volatility and spot ETFs. The language of price, without the price predictions.
- Mining & consensusHow new blocks get made, what difficulty adjusts, and why the rules hold with nobody in charge.
- Protocol & upgradesSegWit, Taproot, soft forks and BIPs: how bitcoin changes and who gets to decide.
- Lightning & layer 2Payment channels, invoices and routing, for moving bitcoin without paying for space in a block.
- Regulation & taxKYC, the Travel Rule, MiCA and capital gains: the rules that reach your account and your tax return.
- Culture & historyMt. Gox, the genesis block, HODL, and the events and slang that shaped how people talk about bitcoin.
- Nodes & softwareBitcoin Core, full nodes, pruning and RPC: the software that enforces the rules.
- Developer referenceP2P message types, opcodes and script terms: the field names you meet reading bitcoin code.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the real cost of buying bitcoin?
Rarely in the headline trading fee. It hides in the spread on an instant buy widget, in the card processing charge, and in the withdrawal fee when you move coins off. A bank transfer into a pro interface is usually the cheapest route.
What is the difference between a market order and a limit order?
A market order buys immediately at whatever the order book offers, which can be worse than the price you saw. A limit order names your price and waits, and on most exchanges it also earns the lower maker fee when it fills.
Should I leave coins on the exchange after buying?
For small, active balances it is acceptable. For savings it is not. Exchange failures have wiped out customer funds repeatedly, and a balance on an exchange is a claim against a company rather than coins you actually control.
What does KYC mean for me in practice?
Photo identification before you can deposit, on nearly every regulated exchange, because anti-money-laundering law requires it. It also means your identity is attached to the addresses you withdraw to, which is worth knowing before you choose where to send them.