Coinbase, Exchanges

What Does Post Only Mean on Coinbase?

When you place a limit order on Coinbase Pro, you’re indicating your interest to buy or sell at a specific price. Your order will only execute if the market price matches your limit price. If the market price doesn’t reach your limit price, your order will remain open until it’s canceled or the price is reached

When you place a limit buy order, you’re saying that you want to buy at a certain price or better. For example, if you place a limit buy order for 1 BTC at $9,000 and the Lowest sell order is $9,200, your order will fill at $9,200.

This is because when you place a limit buy order, your order will only execute at the best available price. In this case, the best available price is $9,200.

If you want to guarantee that your order executes at your specified price, you can place what’s called a post-only limit order. A post-only limit order is an order that will only be placed on the book if it can be filled immediately at your specified limit price.

NOTE: WARNING: Post Only orders on Coinbase are limit orders that do not execute immediately and will only be posted to the order book. These orders are non-marketable, meaning they will not fill against existing orders on the order book, and are only eligible to fill against incoming marketable limit or market orders. If there is insufficient liquidity for the order to fill, it will remain in the order book until it is either cancelled or filled.

This means that if there isn’t enough liquidity at your specified price, your order won’t go on the book and will remain in your account as an open order. You can think of it as placing a bid or offer in an auction – if there aren’t any other bids or offers at your specified price, then your bid or offer won’t be placed.

Post-only orders are useful for avoiding maker fees. When you place an order that isn’t post-only and it doesn’t immediately fill, it may rest on the book for some time before it fills (or gets canceled).

During this time, if the market moves away from your specified price and then comes back to it, you may end up paying a higher price than you intended (due to slippage). By placing a post-only limit order, you can avoid this problem because your order will only be placed on the book if it can fill immediately.

To summarize, post-only orders are limit orders that guarantee immediate execution or no execution at all. This type oforder is useful for avoiding maker fees and for guaranteeing that your trade will execute at the exact price you want.

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