Coinbase/Gemini Selling vs Trading on Their Exchanges

I get that the fees are lower when you use the actual exchange. The regular site is super user-friendly, making it easy to buy or sell right away. But is it truly instant? On the exchange, you have to wait for someone to accept your offer or you accepting theirs, right? If you find an offer that works, you can complete it in one go. So, when you trade on the site, you're dealing directly with Coinbase or Gemini. But on the exchange, you're trading with other users, including institutions and bigger players. You might not even realize if your BTC ends up being sold to a big company through the exchange, huh?

Think of the "simple buy/sell" page as a broker. You click buy, they fill you right away at their quote, and you pay for the convenience (higher fees + hidden spread). The "exchange/advanced" page is the real order book. A market order fills instantly against the best bids/asks; a limit order waits until someone takes it. You're not trading "with Coinbase/Gemini" in some special way, your counterparty is whoever's on the book, often market makers. Nobody sees your identity, just size and price.

Say you want to sell 0.05 btc then by exchange.  Say the price of btc is around 100k.  You want to sell it now.  If someone offers 100500 as the best price but only offers to buy 0.02, but the next offer shows 100450 but offers to buy 0.10 btc, that means if you buy 0.05 btc at 100450 price, it will automatically buy 0.02 btc at 105000 price and 0.03 btc at 100450 price then? The thing is how do you even do the market order when the numbers keep moving so fast then?  So say you want to sell it at minimum 100000 price.  It's a bit above it now.  So you should be able to sell that amount?

Yep, your example is basically how it works. If you market-sell 0.05 BTC and the top of book is 0.02 bid at 100,500 and the next is 0.10 bid at 100,450, your order will sweep those levels: 0.02 fills at 100,500 and the remaining 0.03 fills at 100,450. You get a blended average and you pay taker fees for the whole thing. The price "moving fast" is just the UI distracting your attention, as the matching engine just chews through the book at the moment your order hits.

It's only a ~0.05% change, why are you worried about that? You should only worry about short-term volatility if you're planning a large transaction (say $10,000), as a 1% change means $100 per second of your assets. But Bitcoin's liquidity is too great to fluctuate that much, typically only ~0.05-0.1% per second. If you don't want too much selling price variasions, avoid periods of high volatility. In stable market conditions, just set your best price within that range; there's no need to wait long for it to be filled.

So you are saying whether you sell a market order or limit order, it's not impossible to get screwed over by buying a worst price then?  So if you want to sell and someone is offering at 100,500 but another person is at 100,450 and another person is offering at 99,000, you would never be selling any btc at 99,000 unless there was no buyers that put orders up right?  Thus this would not happen at an exchange like coinbase or Gemini? So whether market or limit order, same thing? The thing that has me confused is this.  Say btc price is 106,000 at the moment.  You want to sell it at 107,000.  If you put a limit order and want it to sell 0.05 btc at 107,000 price, the moment btc price rises and goes over that, then all the order gets filled right?  Are there bots that do this since I heard about that?  Or it's people putting buy orders at 107,000?  So you can put a buy order at 107,000 even if the price currently is 106,000?  I usually think people who do that when they put buy order for 105,000 but it can work both ways? Now do most people say better to do market order or limit order? The thing is if you just want to sell at the price showing now, it isn't hard to sell say 0.05 btc price right?  Like say price is 105,000 now and you don't mind selling it anywhere between 100,000 and 110,000.  So you can easily sell that in seconds right since it would be hard for btc to move outside those numbers in a short time usually?

You won't sell at 99k if there are bids sitting higher unless your order is big enough to eat through all those higher bids or the book vanishes. On a deep pair like BTC-USD, 0.05 BTC is a drop in the water, your market sell will just sweep the top bids and give you a blended average. Same engine whether you press "market" or place a marketable limit (sell 0.05 with a limit of 100k when best bid is 105k). The difference is the limit sets a floor: you'll fill now, but never below 100k. If te price dips underneath mid-fill, the leftover rests at 100k. Your 107,000 example: a sell limit at 107k will sit there until buyers are willing to pay 107k or more. When the bid touches/crosses 107k you get filled against whatever size is available at or above that price; it's not "guaranteed all at once," it's however much liquidity is there. Yes, people and bots place those orders ahead of time. And yes, you can place a buy limit above the current price, but that just executes immediately like a market buy up to your limit.

I'm still sort of confused with this.  So which is the actual current btc price on Coinbase or Gemini then?  So the price showing is the middle of the buy and sell right? So let say btc price is 106,000.  If you want to sell 0.05 btc at 105,000, you can obviously do that now right?  Now if you were to put 105,000 as the market sell price, it will automatically get filled right and the amount will be somewhere close to 106,000?  So you can't get scammed so to speak right by someone wanting to buy at 105,000 when you put 105,000 and the current btc selling price is 105,500 or so? The thing is, is it better to do market or limit?  Let say price price is 106,000 now showing on Coinbase.  What is on average the buying/selling price?  Like 106,300 and 105,700?  Something like that or is the spread much higher?  Now let say you want to sell btc for at least 105,000 and 0.05 btc.  So with those selling prices, you can obviously sell all 0.05 btc at 105,700 right?  However, you could put a market sell order at 105,000 but that would be silly right since if you want to sell soon, doing that is foolish since now you only sell when price drops another 700 dollars when you could sell it right now?  Let say you want to sell 0.05 btc at the price of 105,000 at the lowest... and you want to sell it as soon as possible.  With the selling price now, you do a market order right?  But if you want to sell at the 0.05 btc at say 106,000 or better... either wait until it shows that price on the exchange so you are literally looking at it... or just put a market sell order at 106,000 right?  So that way once it hits that, most likely all 0.05 btc will be sold at 106,000 price right since that amount isn't big at all to Coinbase or Gemini? The other thing is could you do it where say the selling price is 105,700 now.  Could you make a limit order where you sell all 0.05 btc at either 106,000 or 105,000 when the price is 105,700 currently?  Or you can't do that and have to pick one price only?  The thing is if this is even possible, it would be a strange situation when say it goes up to 106,000 selling price, well only 0.03 btc got sold and then price drops so now you have 0.02 btc still available when now selling price is 105,900?  So you have to wait till it hits 106,000 or drops down to 105,000 and until the whole 0.02 btc gets matched by someone else? Does it make sense to always make an offer as opposed to accept?  It seems you save 0.2 percent which is pretty significant.  I mean if you sold 0.05 btc which is let say around 5,000.  That would be 0.2% vs 0.4% on gemini which is 10 dollar fee vs 20 dollar fee right?  But if it's Coinbase exchange, the fee is how much for maker vs taker?  It's still more than gemini?  So Gemini makes sense if you do smaller amounts like under 10k?  But Coinbase is better when higher?  But this is monthly?

Depends on a lot of things. If the spread isn't too big and you're not chasing every 0.1% potential profit, maybe you can do a market sell every now and then. If the spread is too big and the depth is horrible, maybe you shouldn't do market sell. Yes. Need to wait for others to fill your orders, though, just like the usual trading activity. If your demand is too high, then no one would buy that order unless they're desperate. It's the classic supply vs demand thing.