How Much Does a $1M Market Order Really Cost?
A $1M market buy in Bitcoin costs about 0.54 bps of slippage, roughly $54 lost to the book. Thinnest book on the board: LINK (18.3 bps).
The price on the screen is for the first dollar, not the millionth. A market order eats through the book level by level, and what you actually pay depends on how thick the book is at that moment. This page walks the live order book and prices real clip sizes, from $10K to $5M, so you can see what execution costs before you pay it.
The live cost ladder
The cost ladder, live
Average fill price versus mid, in basis points (1 bp = 0.01%), walked from the live book. Green is institutional-grade liquidity; red means size moves the market. Fees are not included: this is pure book impact.
| Market | $10K | $100K | $1M | $5M | Visible book |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BTC | 0.01 bps | 0.01 bps | 0.54 bps | 2.00 bps | $59M |
| ETH | 0.02 bps | 0.02 bps | 0.74 bps | 1.38 bps | $70M |
| SOL | 1.07 bps | 1.89 bps | 4.13 bps | 13.4 bps | $93M |
| XRP | 1.08 bps | 2.01 bps | 5.22 bps | 17.5 bps | $30M |
| DOGE | 0.65 bps | 2.39 bps | 9.50 bps | 26.5 bps | $26M |
| BNB | 1.00 bps | 1.55 bps | 6.99 bps | 25.8 bps | $10M |
| ADA | 2.53 bps | 4.41 bps | 17.8 bps | 67.7 bps | $11M |
| LINK | 2.38 bps | 6.29 bps | 18.3 bps | 85.8 bps | $8M |
Is liquidity getting thinner?
Daily average slippage for the $1M clip in Bitcoin, from our hourly snapshots. Order books exist only in the moment: nobody can backfill this history, which is exactly why we started recording it.
Methodology and honest caveats
Each ladder walks the top 1000 levels of the live perpetual order book: we simulate a market order of each size, fill it level by level, and report the average fill price versus the mid price in basis points. Buying walks the asks, selling walks the bids.
This is pure visible-book impact. It excludes trading fees, funding, and the hidden liquidity and market impact beyond the snapshot: real fills can be better (icebergs, replenishment) or worse (books pull during volatility). Treat the red cells as a warning, not a quote.
The hourly record began on 2026-08-06. Order books cannot be backfilled, so the liquidity-history chart grows from that date forward.
FAQ
What is slippage in plain terms?
The difference between the price you see and the average price you actually get when your order eats into the book. Buy $1M of a market with $50K on the first level and the other $950K fills at worse and worse prices; slippage measures that gap.
Why does this matter if I trade small size?
Two reasons. Thin books hurt everyone during volatility: the same cascade that costs a whale millions is what makes your stop fill far from its trigger. And the ladder is a market-health gauge: when the $1M cost creeps up day after day, liquidity is leaving before price shows it.
Why do some cells say 'book too thin'?
The visible book could not absorb that clip size at all: even sweeping all 1000 levels would not fill the order. In those markets, size can only be executed over time or over multiple venues.
How fresh is this data?
The ladder table is computed from a live order-book snapshot fetched when you load the page (cached about a minute). The history series adds one point per hour.
What happened after days like this?
Every recorded day is grouped by where this metric sat; each band shows the median BTC move that followed. Distribution, not prediction.
Today sits in the "Mid" band of the recorded history so far. Not enough history in this band yet for an honest read (n=16, we show nothing below 30).
| Band | Range | Days | Next 24h | Next 72h | Next 7d | Up next 7d |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Very low | 0.2 bps … 0.3 bps | 18 | not enough history (n<30) | |||
| Low | 0.3 bps … 0.4 bps | 16 | not enough history (n<30) | |||
| Midtoday | 0.4 bps … 0.5 bps | 16 | not enough history (n<30) | |||
| High | 0.5 bps … 0.5 bps | 17 | not enough history (n<30) | |||
| Very high | 0.5 bps … 0.8 bps | 17 | not enough history (n<30) | |||
| All days (base rate) | 84 | +0.0% | -0.3% | -0.4% | 45% | |
Median BTC move after each band. Records since 2026-08-06 (91 days). History, not a forecast.
Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/slippage, data as of 2026-11-05 07:44 UTC