Price slippage is the difference, often represented as a percentage, between the quoted price of an asset and the execution price of a market order. There can be many causes for slippage, but the primary cause is the size of a trade with respect to the composition of the limit orderbook. The bid slippage metrics represent the price slippage of a sell order. And the ask slippage metrics represent the price slippage of a buy order.
Let’s say an investor wishes to purchase 1 BTC at the best ask price of $25,000 and they submit a market order. The top of the order book has a sell order at this price for 0.25 BTC, so .25 BTC is purchased at $25,000 per BTC. The next order in the orderbook is for 0.5 BTC, but at a price of $25,250. This is executed and 0.5 BTC is purchased at $25,250 per BTC. 0.75 BTC has now been purchased, and 0.25 BTC remain. The investor completes his order at the next offer in the orderbook, 0.5 BTC for $25,500. As only 0.25 BTC are needed to complete the 1 BTC purchase, the investor fills 0.25 BTC at the price of $25,500 per BTC. The effective execution price of this purchase is the average price of the individual orders, weighted by quantity:
The slippage is the percentage difference in the market price and this execution price:
$25,000$25,250−$25,000=1%
So this hypothetical purchase of 1 BTC incurred 1% slippage. If the trade size was different, then the slippage would change; that is, slippage is dependent on order size.
API Endpoints
Liquidity slippage metrics can be accessed using the following endpoints:
Returns metrics for specified markets. Results are ordered by tuple (market, time). To fetch the next page of results use next_page_url JSON response field.