Stop-Loss and Take-Profit

Simple explanation

Background: Korean investors say 손절 (son-jeol, "cutting the loss") and 익절 (ik-jeol, "realizing the gain"). Upbit and Bithumb call their conditional orders 예약 주문 ("reserved orders"), and Korean exchanges call the trigger price 감시 가격 ("watch price").

A stop-loss is selling at a loss, below your average purchase price, to cut off the risk of a deeper fall. A take-profit is selling above your average to lock in the gain. Both are decisions about when to sell: you can watch the price and sell by hand, or leave orders that fire when a price you chose is reached. Those preset prices are the stop-loss level and the profit target.

A take-profit can simply be a limit sell. Put a limit sell above the current price and it waits on the order book until a buyer meets it. A stop-loss is different: a limit sell below the current price would fill at once against today's bids. You need a conditional order that says "when the price falls to here, then place my order". That is a stop order, and the price that triggers it is the stop or trigger price. Once triggered, a stop-market order sells at market, while a stop-limit order places a limit sell at an order price you set in advance.

In Korea, Upbit and Bithumb offer such conditional orders as "reserved orders". In May 2020 Upbit extended its reserved orders from its KRW market to its BTC and USDT markets; as reported then, the order is executed automatically when the price reaches the watch price set in advance. According to Upbit's developer center, since May 19, 2025 users can keep up to 20 reserved orders per market. Bithumb's listing notices often say that for about two hours after a new coin starts trading, only limit orders are taken and market and reserved orders are blocked. Other exchanges may offer similar tools under other names, and order types, limits and fees differ by exchange and change, so check the order screen's own guide.

Stop orders do not always work as hoped. A stop-limit order is placed when the trigger is hit, but if the price drops straight through your limit price it does not fill and simply waits, while the price may keep falling and the loss grows. A stop-market order almost always fills, but in a thin or crashing market it can fill far below the trigger (slippage). During the crypto crash on the night of October 10, 2025 (UTC), Kaiko data showed bid-side liquidity nearly vanishing across several major exchanges at the peak of the selling, and at moments like that a stop-loss struggles to fill anywhere near its trigger. A brief spike down, the long lower wick on a chart, can also hit your trigger just before the price bounces back.

Nothing trades while an exchange is under maintenance, so no orders go out. Before its server maintenance in the early hours of October 19, 2026, Upbit said reserved orders would not be cancelled, but if the price reached a watch price during the maintenance, the order could be placed once trading resumed. The price when trading reopens can be far from where it stood before. Korean stop-loss and take-profit orders are also judged on that exchange's own won price. If the kimchi premium shrinks, the Korean price can fall to your stop even though the overseas price has not moved, and coins whose Korean price spikes and collapses on its own, such as coins with closed deposits or fresh listings, can trigger these orders too.

The bigger the loss, the faster the rise needed to recover grows: a 10% loss needs an 11.11% rise, a 30% loss 42.86%, a 50% loss 100%. A stop-loss is meant to avoid such holes, but a stop set too tight gets hit by ordinary swings, and the fees and small losses pile up, which is why people often look at how much a coin usually moves (its volatility) when setting one. A take-profit target likewise gives up any rise after it fills. People are known to feel a loss more sharply than a gain of the same size, so they tend to bank gains quickly and hold losers "until they get back to even". Setting rules in advance is one way people try to keep such feelings out of it, but there is no single right rule, and this post does not recommend any.

Stops matter even more in leveraged futures. When losses on a leveraged position approach the margin, the exchange closes it by force (liquidation), so traders often set a stop-loss to get out first. Many overseas futures exchanges let you attach take-profit (TP) and stop-loss (SL) prices when opening a position, and some let the trigger follow the mark price instead of the last trade. Crypto futures are not traded on Korea's won exchanges, so this part applies to overseas exchanges only.

CoinGaja does not take orders, so you cannot set stops or targets there. Its Kimchi premium by coin table and each coin's page show the four Korean exchanges' prices next to Binance's, so you can tell whether a fall in the Korean price came from the overseas price or from a shrinking premium. The Exchange notices page carries maintenance notices, the Deposit and withdrawal suspensions page lists coins with closed wallets, whose Korean prices easily drift on their own, and the Listings and delistings page shows the exchanges' short-term caution alerts for sharp price moves.

Example

※ Example numbers, for illustration only

See it on CoinGaja

• 📊 Kimchi premium by coin›
• 📢 Exchange notices›
• 🚦 Deposit and withdrawal suspensions by exchange›
• 🗓️ Listings and delistings›

Related terms