Markets
Base and quote assets, the NVDA/USDG notation, price, size, spread, bid and ask.
A market is a pair of assets and the rules for trading between them. Every market on USDG shares the same structure, so what you learn on one applies to all of them.
Notation
Markets are written BASE/QUOTE — for example NVDA/USDG. The first asset is the one you are trading; the second is the one you are pricing it in. A price of 182.45 on NVDA/USDG means one NVDA share token costs 182.45 USDG.
Vocabulary
- Base asset
- The tokenized equity being bought or sold. Sizes are denominated in it.
- Quote asset
- USDG for every listed market. Prices, totals and volume are denominated in it.
- Price
- Quote units per unit of base. Prices move in whole multiples of the market's tick size.
- Size
- Quantity of the base asset. Sizes move in whole multiples of the size step and cannot be smaller than the minimum size.
- Bid
- The highest price a buyer is currently willing to pay. Selling immediately means selling to the bid.
- Ask
- The lowest price a seller is currently willing to accept. Buying immediately means buying the ask.
- Spread
- Ask minus bid. It is the round-trip cost of crossing the book twice and the clearest signal of how liquid a market is.
- Mid
- Halfway between bid and ask. A reference price, not something you can trade at.
Specifications
These values come from the market registry in configuration. The order ticket validates against them, and the order book groups prices in multiples of the tick size.
Sessions
The book itself has no opening or closing bell — it is continuous. The market header still reports the US equity session (pre-market, regular, after hours, overnight, weekend) because it explains liquidity: spreads widen and depth thins outside regular hours, and the simulation reproduces that.