Orca Crypto
Trading term

Order book

The live list of buy and sell orders waiting to be matched.

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Updated 2026-08-303 min readDefinition
Definition

The live list of buy and sell orders waiting to be matched.

An order book shows every resting bid and ask at each price. Bids sit below the current price, asks above it, and the gap between the best of each is the spread.

Centralized exchanges have always worked this way. Onchain, order books were impractical until chains got fast enough, which is why AMMs dominated first.

In practice

Reading depth on the book tells you where large buyers and sellers are waiting, which often marks where price stalls.

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