Order Book
Bids and asks · Market depth · Order ladder
The list of buy and sell orders still waiting to be filled, stacked by price, showing how many coins people want to buy or sell at each price.
Simple explanation
Background: Korean exchanges call the order book 호가창 ("quote window"); prices are in won and follow each exchange's tick sizes. Korean screens usually show rises and buying in red and falls and selling in blue, unlike the green-up, red-down habit elsewhere.
A quote is a price someone has put up: "I'll buy at this price" (a bid) or "I'll sell at this price" (an ask). The order book collects these resting limit orders by price, usually with asks stacked above and bids below, and the quantity still waiting next to each price. The lowest ask and the highest bid are the best quotes, and the gap between them is the spread. The "current price" on screen is the last trade, so it can differ from the quotes right now.
A trade happens when a new order meets a resting one at a matching price. A market buy takes the lowest ask first and, once that level is used up, moves on to the next. The price ticks up or down at the moment someone eats through a whole level, so every price move is someone clearing a layer of the book. An order that rests on the book and fills later is a maker; one that fills against resting orders at once is a taker.
Prices can only sit on the exchange's tick size, the size of one step. On Upbit's won market the step depends on the price: ₩1,000 for anything at ₩1,000,000 (about $700) or more, such as bitcoin, and ₩1 for most coins between ₩100 and ₩1,000. On a ₩100 million (about $71,000) bitcoin, ₩1,000 is only 0.001%, but on a ₩120 coin one step is about 0.83%. Tick sizes differ by exchange, so the same coin's price will not always line up exactly from one exchange to the next.
A book with a lot stacked at each price is "thick"; one with little is "thin". On a thick book a large order barely moves the price; on a thin one a few steps can make your average fill much worse (slippage). The same coin can be thick on one exchange and thin on another, and books are usually thicker on the exchanges and coins with more trading value. Before a big order, check how many levels your amount will reach.
Resting orders can be cancelled at any time before they fill, so a big "buy wall" or "sell wall" is no promise. Repeatedly placing high buy orders to lure other buyers, or firing orders again and again in a short time to push up price and volume, can count as market manipulation under Korea's Virtual Asset User Protection Act, and since 2025 the Financial Services Commission has referred suspects who traded this way to prosecutors. Do not trade just because a wall appears.
A price table usually works out the kimchi premium from the current price. To capture it you would buy at the ask abroad and sell at the bid in Korea, so the spread and depth on both sides eat into the gap. When a Korean book has few sellers, right after a listing or while deposits are closed, even modest buying can jump the price several steps and blow the premium wide open; a thin bid side does the opposite and makes a reverse premium easy.
CoinGaja's Kimchi Premium Calculator fills your amount through each exchange's live order book at the moment you calculate and takes the price impact (slippage) off along with fees, showing what you would actually keep. On the price tables, a coin whose premium could shift by more than 1 percentage point from tick size alone has its premium hidden. The Whale Trade Radar shows the moments when a big order hits the book: a fill that bought resting sell orders is a buy (red), and one that sold into resting buy orders is a sell (blue).
Example
Coin A asks: ₩3,003 × 30,000 · ₩3,002 × 20,000 · ₩3,001 × 10,000 (tick size ₩1)
Coin A bids: ₩3,000 × 15,000 · ₩2,999 × 20,000 · ₩2,998 × 40,000
Spread = 3,001 − 3,000 = ₩1 (1 ÷ 3,000 = about 0.03%)
A market buy of ₩60,030,000 (about $42,900) → ₩3,001 × 10,000 + ₩3,002 × 10,000 = 20,000 coins, average ₩3,001.5
Selling those 20,000 at market straight away → ₩3,000 × 15,000 + ₩2,999 × 5,000 = ₩59,995,000 → the round trip alone costs ₩35,000 (about $25), before fees
The 40,000 coins bid at ₩2,998 (about ₩120 million, roughly $86,000) look like a "buy wall", but they can be cancelled at any moment before they fill
※ Example numbers, for illustration only
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