Spot Trading means buying or selling the actual asset, rather than a contract that tracks its price. If you buy BTC on the Spot market, you hold BTC afterwards.

That part is simple. The trading screen is less so, introducing pairs, bids, asks, depth, fills and several order types at once. Much of the early difficulty is vocabulary, not strategy.

The terms below fall into four groups: what you are trading with, what the market is showing you, how you instruct it, and what happened afterwards.

This glossary defines the terms you are most likely to meet on XT Spot, and explains why each matters when you check an order before confirming it. It is a reference, not a trading guide, and it pairs with XT’s comprehensive guide to Spot Trading for the step-by-step mechanics.

Pairs, Balances, and the Order Ticket

Spot Trading. Buying or selling a digital asset for direct ownership, settled from your account balance.

Trading Pair. Two assets quoted against each other, written as BTC/USDT. Every Spot order happens inside a pair. In BTC/USDT, BTC is the asset you are buying or selling, and USDT is what you are paying with or receiving.

Base Asset. The first asset in the pair, whose quantity you are trading. In BTC/USDT, that is BTC.

Quote Asset. The second asset, used to price the base asset and pay for it. In BTC/USDT, that is USDT. The pair tells you what your quantity refers to: ordering “0.5” in BTC/USDT means 0.5 BTC, not 0.5 USDT.

Buy Order. An instruction to acquire the base asset, paying with the quote asset.

Sell Order. An instruction to dispose of the base asset, receiving the quote asset.

Available Balance. The portion of your balance usable for new orders. Funds committed to open orders are held aside, so available balance can be lower than total holdings.

Order Size, or Quantity. How much of the base asset you want to trade.

Price. The rate per unit of the base asset, expressed in the quote asset.

Total, or Order Value. Quantity multiplied by price: the quote asset the order will use or return. On XT you can enter the Total directly, or use the percentage slider to commit a share of your Spot balance. Quantity and total describe the same order two ways, so checking one against the other will surface a number typed into the wrong field.

Market Prices and Liquidity

Last Price. The price at which the most recent trade executed. It records what just happened, and is not a guaranteed quote.

Bid. A buy order resting in the book, waiting to be matched, arranged by price from high to low.

Ask. A sell order resting in the book, arranged by price from low to high.

Bid-Ask Spread. The gap between the best buy price and the best sell price. A wider spread means a higher implicit cost to enter and exit.

Order Book. The live list of outstanding bids and asks at each price level. On XT’s Spot interface, sell orders appear in red and buy orders in green.

Market Depth, or Depth Chart. A visual version of the order book showing how much is resting at each price level, accumulated outward from the best prices. On XT it is arranged vertically, with the red area above representing sell orders and the green area below representing buy orders. XT’s Help Center covers reading the order book and order depth in more detail.

Trading Volume. How much has traded over a period.

Liquidity. How easily an asset can be bought or sold without significantly moving the price. The order book and depth chart reflect it.

Volatility. How much and how quickly a price moves.

Slippage. The difference between the price you expected and the price your order executed at. A displayed price and an execution price are not the same thing, and in fast-moving or thin markets they can differ.

Spot Order Types

Market Order. An instruction to buy or sell immediately at the best price available. It fills against limit orders already resting in the book, prioritising speed over price certainty, which is where slippage most often appears.

Limit Order. An order placed at a price you choose. It executes only at that price or better, so it may fill straight away if the market is already there, or rest in the book until the market reaches your price, then fill according to available liquidity. On XT, limit is the default order type.

TP/SL, or Take-Profit and Stop-Loss. An XT Spot order type. You set the direction, a trigger price, a limit price and an amount in advance. When the market price reaches the trigger price, the system automatically places a limit order at your preset limit price. XT documents the full setup in its guide to using TP/SL in Spot Trading.

Trigger Price. The level that activates a TP/SL order. Reaching it submits your limit order; it does not complete a trade by itself.

Maker and Taker. XT distinguishes maker activity, where a limit order rests in the book and adds liquidity, from taker activity, where an order matches immediately against existing orders.

A TP/SL order automates placement, not the outcome. The limit order it creates is not guaranteed to fill, because it executes only when the market price reaches your preset limit price or better, and the market can move past that price.

The three order types side by side:

Order Type	Main Purpose	How It Executes	Key Limitation
Market Order	Execute as soon as possible	Immediately against resting orders, at the best available prices	No price certainty; the fill depends on available liquidity
Limit Order	Control the price you trade at	Only when the market reaches your price or better, subject to liquidity	No certainty of execution; it may stay open or never fill
TP/SL	Pre-set an automated entry or exit	Trigger price is reached, then a limit order is placed at your preset limit price	That limit order can still go unfilled if the market moves past it

Order and Trade Records

Open Orders. Orders you have placed that are still live and unfilled.

Order Status. XT records orders as New, Partially Filled, Filled, Cancelled, Rejected or Expired. “New” is live but unmatched, which is what appears under Open Orders. “Partially Filled” means some traded and the rest is still working.

Order History. A record of past orders and how each ended. On the XT website this sits under Order, then Spot Order, then Order History; in the app, under Trade, then Spot, then All Orders.

Trade History. A record of individual executions, since one order can produce several trades. XT’s panel shows time, price and quantity for each.

Filled Quantity. How much of your order actually traded, which may be less than the quantity you submitted.

Average Fill Price. When an order fills in several pieces at different prices, the volume-weighted average of those prices. It is what you actually paid or received per unit, often not the price displayed when you submitted.

Fees. Spot trades incur a trading fee, charged according to whether your order was maker or taker activity. Rates vary by VIP tier and are published on XT’s official fee schedule, the authoritative source rather than any figure quoted elsewhere. Your order confirmation shows an estimated fee alongside the pair, order type, price, amount and total.

Reviewing these records shows what happened on a trade you already placed. It is a way to check your assumptions afterwards, not a method for improving future outcomes.

Common Terms That Cause Confusion

• Market Order vs. Limit Order. A market order trades price certainty for speed; a limit order trades certainty of execution for control over price.
• Last Price vs. Execution Price. Last price records the previous trade; your execution price is what your order actually matched at, which can differ in fast or thin markets.
• Order Submitted vs. Order Filled. Submitting places an order; filling means it traded. A live limit order and a triggered TP/SL order are both submitted but not necessarily filled.
• Available Balance vs. Total Balance. Total includes funds committed to open orders; available is what you can still deploy. Cancelling an open order releases the difference.
• Liquidity vs. Trading Volume. Volume measures how much has traded over a period; liquidity is how easily you can trade right now without moving the price. A pair can show high past volume and still be thin now.

Before You Confirm

Before confirming an order, be able to answer each of these:

1. Do I know which asset I am buying, which I am paying with, and which side of the pair my quantity refers to?
2. Have I selected the order type I actually intended?
3. Do I understand the price, the quantity and the resulting total value?
4. Do I understand that a Spot asset can still change in value after I buy it?

These are questions to answer for yourself. They do not point to a single correct choice.

From Vocabulary to Execution

A glossary does not remove market risk, and knowing the vocabulary does not make any trade a good idea. What it does is narrow the gap between what you intend and what you submit.

Read your order screen in those four groups, and when you confirm an order you are confirming the one you meant to place.

About XT Exchange

Founded in 2018, XT Exchange is a global digital asset trading platform serving more than 12 million registered users across over 200 countries and regions. Its services span spot, margin and futures trading, TradFi market exposure, a real-world asset marketplace, and everyday payments through XT Pay. Guided by Xplore Crypto Trade with Trust, XT Exchange enters its ninth year with Build the NeXT, reflecting its focus on trust, broader market access, and practical uses for digital assets.

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