Spot Trading Explained

This page assumes you have never traded before. It covers what spot trading is, the words you need, how an order actually travels through this API, and then the exact sequence of calls to make one trade from start to finish.

1. What is spot trading?

Spot trading means buying or selling a coin for immediate delivery, at the price it is worth right now. "Spot" means "on the spot": you pay now, and you own the coin now.

It is the simplest form of trading there is. It works like changing money at an exchange counter, except the counter never closes and the price keeps moving.

A worked example

You hold 1,000 USDT. Bitcoin is trading at 60,000 USDT. You buy 0.001 BTC.

You pay: 0.001 x 60,000 = 60 USDT

You now hold: 940 USDT and 0.001 BTC

If Bitcoin later rises to 70,000 USDT, your 0.001 BTC is worth 70 USDT, so you could sell for a 10 USDT profit. If it falls to 50,000 USDT, it is worth 50 USDT and you are down 10 USDT.

Either way the coins are genuinely yours. Nobody can take them from you, and you never owe anyone anything.

How spot differs from futures

	Spot	Futures
What you own	The actual coin	A contract that tracks the price
Money required	The full amount	A fraction of it, called margin
Borrowing involved	None	Yes. That is what leverage is
Worst case	The coin loses value	The exchange closes your position and your margin is gone
Can you be forced out?	No	Yes, this is called liquidation

If you are new, start with spot. You cannot lose more than you put in.

2. The words you need

Trading pair

Every market is written as BASE-QUOTE, in capitals, joined by a hyphen: BTC-USDT, ETH-USDT.

Base (BTC) is the coin you are buying or selling.

Quote (USDT) is the money you pay with or receive.

Price always means "how much quote for one base". A BTC-USDT price of 60000 means one BTC costs 60,000 USDT.

So on BTC-USDT:

BUY means spend USDT and receive BTC.

SELL means spend BTC and receive USDT.

Order types

Type	What you are saying	You control	The `price` field
`MARKET`	"Fill me now, at whatever the best available price is"	The quantity only	Must be left out
`LIMIT`	"Fill me only at my price or better. Wait if you have to"	The price and the quantity	Required

A MARKET order almost always fills straight away, but you cannot know the exact price in advance. A LIMIT order gets you the price you asked for, but it may sit open for a long time and may never fill at all.

Sending a price on a MARKET order is rejected, not ignored. Leave the field out entirely.

Available balance and locked balance

Your balance has two parts:

available is what you can spend right now.

locked is money that is already committed to an open order.

When you place an order, MinGlobal sets aside the funds it will need. This is called the reserve, and it moves money from available to locked. It is still your money. It is simply spoken for, so you cannot accidentally spend it twice.

Which coin gets reserved depends on the side:

Side	Reserves	How much
`BUY`	The quote coin (USDT)	`quantity x price`, plus a buffer on MARKET orders
`SELL`	The base coin (BTC)	`quantity`

The reservedAsset field on the order tells you which coin was set aside, and reservedAmount tells you how much. Trading fees are charged separately and are not part of the reserve, so leave a little headroom.

Wallets

Your account has three separate wallets: SPOT, ASSET and FUTURE. Spot orders spend from the spot wallet only. If your money is sitting in the asset or futures wallet, you must move it in the web app first. The API deliberately cannot move funds between your own wallets.

3. How spot trading works, in API terms

What happens when you place an order

You send POST /v1/orders.

MinGlobal validates it: is the pair tradeable, is the price a valid increment, do you have enough money.

MinGlobal reserves your funds. They move from available to locked.

You get 201 Created back with an order object.

Separately, the order is forwarded to the venue where it is actually matched against other traders.

It fills completely, fills partly, sits waiting, or is refused.

Steps 4 and 5 are not the same moment. This is the single most important thing to understand about this API.

A 201 does not mean the market accepted your order
201 Created only means "we took your order and set your money aside". The market may still refuse it a moment later, and a refusal is not an HTTP error. Your HTTP client will not raise an exception, and a naive if (response.ok) check will treat a rejected order as a success.
Always read the status field in the response body. Never decide based on the HTTP status code alone.

Order statuses

`status`	What it means	What to do
`PENDING_SUBMIT`	We accepted it and reserved your money. Not at the market yet	Wait, then poll
`SUBMITTED`	Live at the market, waiting to fill	Wait, then poll
`FILLED`	Fully traded	Done
`CANCELED`	Cancelled. Reserve released	Done
`EXPIRED`	Expired. Reserve released	Done
`REJECTED`	Refused. Reserve released	Read `rejectReason` and `venueCode` from `GET /v1/orders/{id}`
`UNKNOWN`	The market did not answer in time. Your money is still reserved	Poll `GET /v1/orders/{id}`. Do not place the order again

UNKNOWN deserves real care. It does not mean the order failed. It means nobody knows yet, and a background process is working out the truth. If you re-send the order assuming it failed, you can end up with two live orders and double the exposure you intended.

How to track an order

There is no WebSocket and no streaming for account data, so you poll. Call GET /v1/orders/{id} for one order, or GET /v1/orders?limit=50 for your recent orders, newest first.

Keep your own copy of order history. The list endpoint has no paging beyond limit, so you can never read further back than your most recent 200 orders.

4. How to make a spot trade, step by step

The full sequence, with the exact call at each step. In this collection the signing headers are added for you.

Step 1. Find out what you can trade

GET /v1/market/symbols

This returns every tradeable pair. Use this list, not the asset catalogue: /v1/deposit/assets lists coins you can hold, which is a different thing from pairs you can trade.

Step 2. Check the current price

GET /v1/market/tickers                    # 24-hour summary of every pair
GET /v1/market/depth?symbol=BTC-USDT      # the actual offers waiting in the book

Look at the depth if you are planning a MARKET order. The best ask is roughly what you will pay to buy, and the best bid is roughly what you will receive if you sell. The gap between them is the spread, and on a thin market it can be wide.

Step 3. Check you have the money

GET /v1/transfers/balances?asset=USDT

Read wallets.USDT.spot.available. That is what you can actually spend. Anything in locked is already committed to other orders.

Step 4. Work out what the order will cost

LIMIT BUY: you need quantity x price of the quote coin. Buying 0.001 BTC at 60,000 USDT needs 60 USDT available.

LIMIT SELL: you need quantity of the base coin. Selling 0.001 BTC needs 0.001 BTC available.

MARKET BUY: the reserve includes a slippage buffer on top, because the final price is not known yet.

If you do not have enough, nothing is written at all and you get 409 INSUFFICIENT_BALANCE.

Step 5. Place the order

POST /v1/orders
Content-Type: application/json
Idempotency-Key: <a fresh unique string>

{
  "symbol": "BTC-USDT",
  "side": "BUY",
  "type": "LIMIT",
  "quantity": "0.001",
  "price": "60000"
}

Every amount is a string, not a number. See 05. Data Formats and Conventions for why this matters.

The Idempotency-Key header is what makes retrying safe. If your network drops and you never see the response, you can send the identical request with the identical key and get the original result back rather than placing a second order.

Step 6. Read the status, not the HTTP code

You get 201 Created. Now look inside:

{
  "id": "clw8n2k4x0003abcdefghij",
  "status": "SUBMITTED",
  "orderType": "LIMIT",
  "reservedAmount": "60",
  "reservedAsset": "USDT"
}

status: "SUBMITTED" means it is live. status: "REJECTED" means it was refused, even though the HTTP code was 201.

Note the naming difference: you send type, and you receive orderType. They are not the same field name. timeInForce comes back as "GTC" for LIMIT orders and null for MARKET orders, and price is null on MARKET orders.

Step 7. Watch it

GET /v1/orders/{id}

Poll until status reaches a terminal value: FILLED, CANCELED, EXPIRED or REJECTED. filledQty shows how much has traded so far, and avgPrice shows the average price you actually got.

Step 8. Cancel if you change your mind

DELETE /v1/orders/{id}
Idempotency-Key: <a fresh unique string>

A successful cancel returns the order with status: "CANCELED" and the reserve released.

A failed cancel is not a cancelled order, and it is not a failed order either. If this call returns 501, 409 or 503, nothing was released and no status was written. Your order is still whatever GET /v1/orders/{id} says it is a moment later. Re-read it rather than assuming. Never treat a failed cancel as a reason to place a replacement order.

Step 9. Confirm the result

GET /v1/transfers/balances?asset=BTC

After a filled BUY, your BTC available has gone up and your USDT has gone down. The trade is complete.

5. Common mistakes, and what they look like

Mistake	What you see	Fix
Treating `201` as "the trade worked"	Silent losses. Rejected orders counted as successes	Branch on the `status` field
Sending `price` with a `MARKET` order	`400 VALIDATION_ERROR`	Leave `price` out entirely for MARKET
Sending numbers instead of strings for money	Rounding errors, rejected values	Use strings: `"0.001"`, never `0.001`
Comparing money with `==` on strings	`"1.5"` and `"1.50"` look different but are equal	Compare through a decimal type
Adding a field the schema does not know	The whole request is rejected	The body schema is strict. Send only documented fields
Filtering with `?symbol=` on `GET /v1/orders`	You get orders for every symbol	There is no symbol filter. Filter in your own code
Retrying by resending identical signed bytes	`401 REPLAYED_REQUEST`	Sign again with a fresh timestamp
Money sitting in the wrong wallet	`409 INSUFFICIENT_BALANCE` while the app shows a balance	Spot orders spend from the spot wallet. Move funds in the web app
Re-placing an order after `UNKNOWN` or a failed cancel	Two live orders, double the exposure	Poll and find out the real state first

03. Spot Trading Explained

Spot Trading Explained

1. What is spot trading?

A worked example

How spot differs from futures

2. The words you need

Trading pair

Order types

Available balance and locked balance

Wallets

3. How spot trading works, in API terms

What happens when you place an order

A `201` does not mean the market accepted your order

Order statuses

How to track an order

4. How to make a spot trade, step by step

Step 1. Find out what you can trade

Step 2. Check the current price

Step 3. Check you have the money

Step 4. Work out what the order will cost

Step 5. Place the order

Step 6. Read the status, not the HTTP code

Step 7. Watch it

Step 8. Cancel if you change your mind

Step 9. Confirm the result

5. Common mistakes, and what they look like

03. Spot Trading Explained

Spot Trading Explained#

1. What is spot trading?#

A worked example#

How spot differs from futures#

2. The words you need#

Trading pair#

Order types#

Available balance and locked balance#

Wallets#

3. How spot trading works, in API terms#

What happens when you place an order#

A 201 does not mean the market accepted your order#

Order statuses#

How to track an order#

4. How to make a spot trade, step by step#

Step 1. Find out what you can trade#

Step 2. Check the current price#

Step 3. Check you have the money#

Step 4. Work out what the order will cost#

Step 5. Place the order#

Step 6. Read the status, not the HTTP code#

Step 7. Watch it#

Step 8. Cancel if you change your mind#

Step 9. Confirm the result#

5. Common mistakes, and what they look like#

Spot Trading Explained

1. What is spot trading?

A worked example

How spot differs from futures

2. The words you need

Trading pair

Order types

Available balance and locked balance

Wallets

3. How spot trading works, in API terms

What happens when you place an order

A `201` does not mean the market accepted your order

Order statuses

How to track an order

4. How to make a spot trade, step by step

Step 1. Find out what you can trade

Step 2. Check the current price

Step 3. Check you have the money

Step 4. Work out what the order will cost

Step 5. Place the order

Step 6. Read the status, not the HTTP code

Step 7. Watch it

Step 8. Cancel if you change your mind

Step 9. Confirm the result

5. Common mistakes, and what they look like