What is a bid-ask spread in crypto?

A bid-ask spread is the difference between what buyers are offering for a crypto asset and what sellers are asking for it. The SEC's investor site defines the bid as the highest price a buyer will pay and the ask, also called the offer, as the lowest price a seller will accept. The bid is almost always lower, and the space between them is the spread.

What is bid ask spread explained simply?

On an exchange, bids and asks sit in the order book. The best bid and the best ask are the two prices closest to each other. The price shown on a chart is often the midpoint between them.

Australia's Moneysmart describes taking the other side's price as crossing the spread. A market order to buy fills at the ask, and a market order to sell fills at the bid. Someone who bought and sold at once would lose the spread, before any fees. That is why it counts as a trading cost.

What is a bid ask spread example?

Say a coin's best bid is $99.90 and its best ask is $100.10. The spread is $0.20, and the midpoint is $100. As a share of the midpoint that is 0.2%, or 20 basis points. A basis point is one hundredth of a percent, and research firms such as Kaiko use basis points to compare spreads across assets.

Apps that sell crypto directly to customers often build the spread into the quoted price. Robinhood's crypto routing page explains that orders fill at the bid or ask, not the mid price shown on the chart. In its example, a $100 buy with a 0.96% buy spread costs $0.96 over the midpoint, of which Robinhood Crypto receives $0.95 from its market maker, a rate it gives as of June 15, 2026. This is separate from the explicit maker and taker fees charged on many exchanges.

What is the bid ask spread on bitcoin?

There is no single number. It differs by exchange, by trading pair and from minute to minute. In a January 2023 analysis, Kaiko found bitcoin and ether spreads against the stablecoin USDT were extremely tight, tighter than for other top tokens, while US dollar pairs were generally wider.

Kaiko also notes that spreads tend to widen when prices are volatile, as market makers protect themselves against sudden moves. Narrow spreads usually point to a liquid market with many active buyers and sellers. Wider ones make it harder to trade at a stable price, and the cost adds up for anyone who trades often. The spread is also different from slippage, which is the extra cost of a large order eating through several price levels in the book.