THE CIX ARCHIVE · A FRESH EDITION
Can You Get Out? Read the Liquidity.
The original playbook checked recent trades before placing an order. Now work through spread, depth and slippage. Compare your hypothetical order with the actual market around it. A displayed price is not a promise that your whole order can fill there.
Three different things to check
The last traded price is the price of the most recent transaction. The best bid is the highest displayed buy order; the best ask is the lowest displayed sell order. The spread is the gap between them. Order-book depth shows displayed quantities at different prices. Recent trades show transactions that actually occurred. None of these is interchangeable with the others.
Walk through a small order
Imagine the best ask is $1.00 for 100 units and the next ask is $1.02 for 200 units. A market buy of 250 units would consume 100 at $1.00 and 150 at $1.02 if nothing changes. The total is $253, or $1.012 per unit before fees. Your average fill differs from the top-of-book price even in this simplified example. Real books change while an order travels to the venue.
Match size to the market
The archived guide inspected recent ETH-denominated trade sizes. Its historical numbers are examples, not a current liquidity threshold. Compare a hypothetical position with recent transactions and available depth on both sides. A large daily volume figure does not prove that you can exit your size now. Displayed orders can be cancelled; one large wall is not a dependable safety net.
The quote currency matters
An ETH-denominated pair measures the token against ETH. A gain in that pair can coexist with a loss measured in dollars if ETH falls sufficiently. Decide which account currency you will use to judge the result, and record both conversions where relevant. Otherwise you can mistake a relative gain for an increase in the spending power you care about.
Your exercise
Use a public order book without submitting an order. Write the best bid, best ask, spread and timestamp. Calculate a hypothetical average fill across several levels, then repeat on the sell side. Add the venue's published fees. Explain what could change before execution. If the exit requires liquidity that is not present, write 'skip' rather than making the position fit the story.
Adapted from the trade-history and liquidity checks in the original CIX Small Accounts guide. Numerical examples are new and hypothetical. Educational material; examples are not live trade instructions.