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ERC20

Trading TOKEN – Market Order vs. Limit Order

Market orders allow you to trade a token for the going price, while limit orders allow you to name your price.

When you’re ready to buy or sell a token on a decentralized exchange also called DEX, you have two main ways to determine the price you’ll trade at: the market order and the limit order. With market orders, you trade the token for whatever the going price is. With limit orders, you can name a price, and if the token hits it the trade is usually executed.

That’s the most fundamental difference between a market order and a limit order, but each type can be more appropriate for a given trading situation. Here’s what you need to consider.

Market orders get you in or out fast

The biggest advantage of a market order is that your broker can execute it quickly, because you’re taking the best price available at that moment. If you’re buying a token, a market order will execute at whatever price the seller is asking. If you’re selling, a market order will execute at whatever the buyer is bidding.

The biggest drawback of the market order is that you can’t specify the price of the trade. Many times that doesn’t matter, however. For large enterprises that are highly liquid (trade in high volumes), the difference between buyers’ bid price and sellers’ ask price — called the bid-ask spread — is cents on the dollar. Unless you’re buying huge numbers of tokens, that difference doesn’t matter.

However, if the price moves quickly, you could end up trading at a vastly different price from when you entered the order. That’s rare but possible. A more likely scenario: You enter a market order after the market closes and then the enterprice announces news that affects its token price. If you don’t cancel the order before the exchange opens the next day, you may end up trading at a much different price than you had intended.

Another potential drawback occurs with illiquid tokens, those trading on low volume. When you enter a market order, you might spike or sink the token price because there are not enough buyers or sellers at that moment to cover the order. You’ll end up with a much different price than just moments before as your order influences the market.

Go with a market order when: 

  • You want a quick execution at any cost
  • You’re trading a highly liquid token with a narrow bid-ask spread (typically cents)
  • You’re trading only a few tokens (for example, less than 1000)

Limit orders might get you the price you want

The biggest advantage of the limit order is that you get to name your price, and if the token reaches that price, the order will probably be filled. Typically, you can set limit orders to execute up to three months after you enter them, meaning you don’t have to watch compulsively to get your price.

On some (illiquid) tokens, the bid-ask spread can easily cover trading costs. For example, if the spread is 10 cents and you’re buying 100 shares, a limit order at the lower bid price would save you $10, enough to cover the commission.

The biggest drawback: You’re not guaranteed to trade the token. If the token never reaches the limit price, the trade won’t execute. Even if the token hits your limit, there may not be enough demand or supply to fill the order. That’s more likely for small, illiquid tokens.

Another drawback, especially with an order that can execute up to three months in the future, is that the token may move dramatically. Your trade may be filled at a price much different from what you could have otherwise gotten.

Imagine Ethereum announces a potentially huge novelty and its Ether (ETH) token spikes from $200 to $270, while you have a limit order to sell at $202 using a USD equivalent stablecoin like Tether as settlement. You might end up selling for $202 when you could have received more. The reverse can happen with a limit order to buy when bad news emerges. You may end up buying at a much higher price than you otherwise could have or now think the tokens’s worth.

Go with a limit order when:

  • You want to specify your price, sometimes much different from where the token is
  • You want to trade a token that’s illiquid or the bid-ask spread is large (usually more than 5 cents)
  • You’re trading a high number of tokens (for example, more than 500)

Save money on commissions

Limit orders can help you save money on commissions, especially on illiquid tokens that bounce around the bid and ask prices. But you’ll also save money by taking a buy-and-hold mentality to your investments. Because you avoid selling out of the market, you’ll incur fewer commissions and you’ll avoid capital-gains taxes, which could easily dwarf trading costs. Plus, you’ll want to stay invested to let the compound growth work its magic.

Geir Solem

Overview of wrapped tokens

Description of wrapped token

A wrapped token is an asset hosted on the Ethereum blockchain with a price that is the same as another underlying asset, even if it’s not on the same blockchain or on a blockchain at all.

A wrapped token is an ERC-20 compatible token with a value identical to another asset that it represents, either through a smart contract or by being backed one-to-one with the underlying asset. 

Wrapped Bitcoin, for instance, is a token worth the same as one BTC at any given moment, as a smart contract algorithm reproduces its price in real time and regulates the underlying fund with supply and demand information gleaned from user transactions. In exchange for their money, wrapped token users get an equivalent amount of value “wrapped up” in an asset that’s more easily mobilized by decentralized applications (DApps).

Wrapped Ether, is a token worth the same as one ETH.

Types of wrapped tokens ?

Because Ethereum is the biggest DeFi ecosystem, wrapped tokens are often those hosted on other blockchains but are also stablecoins that are pegged to the dollar.

Many of the first wrapped assets were, in fact, fiat-backed stablecoins, such as tokens with prices pegged to the dollar — Tether, Coinbase’s USDC or TrueUSD. There are also euro, yen, yuan and countless other fiat stablecoins that are mostly based on the Ethereum blockchain. 

The Wrapped Zcash token (coming), a privacy coin, will provide Ethereum DApp users with the coin’s anonymity advantages, plus a reliable way to invest in Zcoin, thereby boosting its market.

Wrapped Zcash is a way for Zcash to be used within financial applications built on Ethereum — it opens a bridge from one ecosystem to the other. This two-way street benefits both Zcash and Ethereum users, as Zcash users are able to transact and invest within the many decentralized financial applications built on ETH.

This integration also brings an effect on the supply and demand for Zcash, which could prove a significant tailwind. For Ethereum users, the privacy benefits of Zcash enabled by its z-addresses and t-addresses provide new ways for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications to limit the publication of identifying information held in transaction data while still passing auditory and compliance standards.

These are backed accordingly via the reserves, with coins fed in according to the demand of online crypto exchanges and larger institutional investors who want to quickly exchange fiat money into crypto and manage their money within a given platform. This makes it as easy to deposit dollars into DeFi applications and blockchain wallets as it does to have a reliable counter currency providing traders relief from crypto asset volatility.

Blockchain interoperability

Other cryptocurrencies are beginning to launch wrapped versions of their tokens on Ethereum in larger numbers, with interoperability (The ability to share information across different blockchain networks, without restrictions) a vital consideration for solutions that want to be taken seriously.

Currently, one blockchain has no knowledge of information that might exist in a different blockchain. For instance, the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain exists fully independently of the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain — in the sense that it has no knowledge of any information recorded there — and vice versa. Blockchain-based projects are isolated from each other, despite existing within the same industry and working with the same technology.

The crypto industry involves “a series of unconnected systems operating alongside, but walled from each other”. Blockchain interoperability is the ability to exchange data between different blockchains seamlessly, as if there were no boundaries.

Geir Solem

ERC20 Token Design Mistakes vs ERC223 Token

The old ERC20 token standard have bugs and disadvantages resulting in thousands of ERC20 tokens to be lost annually. These design mistakes has been addressed in the new ERC223 token which is fully compatible with ERC20 wallets and exchanges. 

What is ERC?

ERC means Ethereum Request for Comments. It practically allows for smart contracts to be built on the Ethereum platform based on certain standards thus creating a common interface for all Ethereum tokens. Ethereum developers recommend that any Ethereum developer who wants to create a new token should follow this set of standards to ensure that their tokens are easily recognizable on both the Ethereum network and other third-party service providers such as crypto-wallets. These ERC20 tokens can be received, and sent just like any other cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum.

ERC20 bugs

The ERC20 standard is programmed software and accordingly contains some bugs and logic errors. Two different ways to handle tokens were taken into account in the creation. On the one hand, tokens can be sent to another address. A smart contract is paid by using the “approve” and “transferFrom” functions.  Thereafter, the contract may be approved to allow the tokens to be withdrawn. Afterwards the token is filled or lifted by means of “transferFrom”.

When transferring tokens for a contract with “transferFrom” this transaction is basically valid. However, the contract does not recognize it by the user, resulting in the tokens not being loaded into your account. Normally, an emergency token function is stored in the exchange contract (decentralized). If this is not the case, the tokens can not be returned and are lost forever.

ERC20 will continue to be used

Most token based projects have used the original ERC20 token standard as it is with faults. This include even  well known projects.

At present many developers are still unaware of the design mistakes and bugs in the old ERC20 tokens standard so they continue to use it in new developments.

Can the ERC223 standard solve the problems?

ERC223 is a new token standard that seeks to address the design mistakes / errors of ERC20. These problems are:

  • ERC20 provides no programmatic interface to handle incoming transactions in smart contracts.
  • ERC20 handling smart contracts typically require you to trust them with all your funds in order to use them. This is unlike native ether, which has excellent support for trustless transactions.
  • Nothing prevents the user to send ERC20 tokens to a smart contract, such as an exchange. However, due to the inability to handle incoming transactions these sent tokens will not alter the state of the smart contract (such as balance on the exchange), and it will be impossible to retrieve them from the smart contract. Effectively, these tokens get burned resulting in multi millions of USD losses in ERC20 tokens. Because of the deflationary nature of cryptocurrencies this losses will continue to accumulate.

The main improvement of ERC223

  • On top of offering the same level convenience as ERC20 tokens, it also offers its holders protection against losing tokens by introducing a revert option or altogether blocking the transfer of tokens to random contracts. Tokens can no longer be sent to non supporting contracts with the ERC223 standard.
  • ERC223 allows to deposit tokens into a contract with a single transaction (function) which reduces the use of resources. This again reduce the cost and running time of the transaction to about half compared to that of the old ERC20 standard.

ERC223 is created to be compatible with existing blockchain infrastructure, such as wallets like Mist, Parity, MyEtherWallet and MetaMask, and blockchain explorers such as Etherscan and Ethplorer.

Geir Solem