Glossary

Quick definitions for the terms you'll see around the app.

Markets & Prices

Spot

A market where you buy or sell an asset for immediate settlement - no leverage, profit is just sell price minus buy price.

Futures

A futures contract is an agreement that tracks an underlying spot price while letting a trader use leverage and take short positions. Perpetual futures never expire and use periodic funding payments to stay anchored to spot.

Mark Price

Mark price is the reference price used to calculate unrealized P/L and trigger liquidations on futures positions. It tracks a manipulation-resistant spot index of the underlying asset rather than the last trade price.

See also: liquidation, unrealized pnl, futures

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Tick

A single price update. The ticker publishes one per second per instrument, and every order evaluation runs on a tick.

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Candle (OHLCV)

A candle summarizes price movement over a fixed time window using four values - open, high, low, and close - plus volume. Common intervals range from 1-minute to 1-day.

Volume

How much of an asset was traded during a window, measured in the base asset. Higher volume means more liquidity and tighter slippage.

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Slippage

Slippage is the gap between the price you expected when you placed an order and the average price you actually filled at. It widens on thin order books and during fast moves, when there is not enough resting liquidity at your target price.

Basis points (bps)

A unit equal to one hundredth of a percent. 1 bp = 0.01%, 100 bps = 1%. Used to keep small percentages readable: a 5 bps fee is 0.05%, a 25 bps move is a quarter of a percent.

Limit Order

An order to buy or sell at a specific price or better. It waits in the book until the market reaches your price, and you pay the maker fee when it fills.

Market Order

An order to buy or sell immediately at the best available price. Fills fast, pays the taker fee, and may slip if the book is thin.

Stop loss

A conditional order that fires when price crosses a threshold in the losing direction, used to cut losses on an open position.

See also: take profit, bracket, trailing stop

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Take profit

A conditional order that fires when price crosses a threshold in the winning direction, used to lock in gains without watching the chart.

See also: stop loss, bracket, trailing stop

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Trailing Stop

A stop loss that follows the best price you've seen - it ratchets closer as the market moves in your favor and fires if price reverses by the trail percentage.

Post-only

A flag on a limit order that rejects the order if it would immediately match, guaranteeing you pay the maker fee.

Reduce-only

A flag on a futures order that only closes or reduces a position, never opens or grows one - useful as a safety net on stops.

IOC (Immediate-or-Cancel)

A time-in-force flag that fills what it can right away and cancels the rest; it never rests in the book.

GTC (Good-Till-Cancelled)

The default time-in-force - the order stays active until it fills or you cancel it.

Fill

A single match between your order and the market. An order can complete in one fill or across multiple fills as the price moves through your level (a partial fill until the rest catches up).

Maker

An order that adds liquidity to the book by resting until matched. Limit orders that sit for more than 200ms before filling count as maker. Maker fills pay the lower fee tier.

Taker

An order that removes liquidity from the book by crossing the spread immediately. Market orders are always taker; limit orders are taker when they fill within 200ms of placement. Taker fills pay the higher fee tier.

Bracket Order (OCO)

An entry with a stop loss and/or take profit attached - when the entry fills the exits activate, and when one exit fires the other cancels.

Long

Betting price will go up - you buy first and sell later. On spot everything is long by default; on futures, long means buy to open.

Short

Betting price will go down. On futures you sell first (borrowing the asset implicitly) and buy later to close, profiting when price falls.

Leverage

A multiplier on position size - 10x means $100 of margin controls a $1,000 position. Gains and losses magnify equally, and your liquidation price sits closer to entry as leverage rises.

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Notional

The dollar size of a position, ignoring leverage. A 0.1 BTC long at $60,000 has $6,000 notional whether you posted $6,000 margin (1x) or $600 margin (10x). Fees, funding, and maintenance margin all scale with notional, not with the margin you posted.

Isolated Margin

Each position has its own locked margin - if it liquidates, only that margin is lost and the rest of your balance is safe. Recommended while you're learning.

See also: cross margin, leverage, liquidation

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Cross Margin

All positions share a single collateral pool, so a losing position can draw on your entire balance - you survive bigger drawdowns but risk losing everything at once.

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Maintenance Margin

Maintenance margin is the minimum equity required to keep a leveraged position open, commonly around 1% of position notional. If your margin balance drops below this line, the position is liquidated.

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Liquidation

What happens when your margin hits maintenance - the position is force-closed at market, you lose the posted margin, and a 0.5% liquidation fee is deducted.

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Unrealized P/L

The paper profit or loss on an open position if you closed it right now at the mark price. It's not money in your pocket yet - it becomes realized when you close.

Realized P/L

The profit or loss from trades that have already closed. This is what actually hits your balance.

Funding Rate

A periodic payment between long and short futures holders that keeps the perpetual price tethered to spot - positive means longs pay shorts, negative means shorts pay longs. Settles every 8 hours.