Trying to understand the BID/ASK spread

[8bitrobot]

I'm new to BitCoin and BitCoin trading. I was hoping someone could help me understand this.

On BitBay.com, I see a series of ASK and BID prices. It would seem to me that one would want to purchase coins from the lowest ASKs and sell at the highest BIDs. That much seems obvious. However, if I look at the spread, there are ASKs for 4 times the current price and BIDs for one quarter of the current price.

Are these from people who really expect to sell BitCoin at the value of $2,000 USD per Bit Coin when one could currently buy at $504.00 USD per 1 Bit Coin?

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[odolvlobo]

Some possibilities:

• They are being lazy and they are not canceling out-dated orders or they are placing orders now for future potential trades.
• They are hoping to catch careless market orders. For example, somebody wants to by 1 BTC at market, but accidentally buys 1000 BTC at market. This happens occasionally.

BTW, the "spread" is the difference between the highest bid and lowest ask.

[outatime1]

I assume that these orders are from people that want to hold that order long term and sell very high relative to now and want to buy very low relative to now.  Sometimes on some exchanges, there may be an unusual and very dramatic spike in price or drop in price because of low volume or a panic buy or sell situation.  And sometimes a mistake is made in an order and you can take advantage of someone elses mistake if the trading volume is low.