Are “best rates” even real anymore?

[Swapzilla_io]

Hey everyone,

Not sure if it’s just me, but whenever the market starts moving, those `best rate` quotes on exchanges don’t really feel that accurate anymore.

Curious how it is for you guys:
- are there any services where the final rate actually matches what you see?
- or is some slippage basically normal everywhere now?

Would really appreciate any real examples, especially if you had swaps where the rate stayed exactly as shown

[Zwei]

Not sure if it’s just me, but whenever the market starts moving, those `best rate` quotes on exchanges don’t really feel that accurate anymore.

the "best rate" is not the "best rate" because the markets are moving, so the rates don't get updated fast enough to keep up.

- or is some slippage basically normal everywhere now?

that's pretty much always been the norm, how else would exchanges make their money?

Would really appreciate any real examples, especially if you had swaps where the rate stayed exactly as shown

i won't show you an example, but if you are speaking about instant swap exchanges, if you pick the "fixed rate" you always get what they show you (within the time limit). but if you go with the "float rate" the amount you receive can be different from what they show.

[logfiles]

Where else would exchange make money from? 

If you are a broker, and you facilitated deals within buyers and sellers at the exact market prices which they expect, where else are you going to get money from for being a broker?

Best rates is just a marketing language. It's very common among exchanges just like "No KYC"

[joniboini]

As far as my experience goes, they'll explain what they mean by best rates on their faqs or somewhere else. Even my local exchanges do that (they have lower volume compared to international markets). Maybe you should check how exactly they determine that.

In a popular exchange that I use for example, they basically take the median between buy and sell order from the spot market, so it's not ideal for day trading or swing-trading.

[hugeblack]

If the platform has no hidden fees, the best way to reduce fees is to decrease the time required to obtain a single confirmation by tracking the last mined block, waiting 7-8 minutes, and then broadcasting the transaction with a slightly higher fee. This will ensure that the transaction is confirmed quickly and that the best rate remains the same.

[BitMaxz]

I believe he is referring to the average price, which may be different from the price when he is trying to trade his coins directly from the exchange.
@OP, each exchange has its own rate; there are people who fill those prices; they usually call it "arbitrage." Those people who do that are the ones who fill those prices.

If you swap coins from a swapping site like Uniswap, you are trading against the liquidity pool. If you sell a large amount of tokens on uniswap, you are manually removing buy-side assets. As you sell more tokens, the price will fall until it is much lower than the market average.
I think this is the reason why you don't feel the market is not accurate anymore.


If we are wrong, you better tell us more about where you trade or where you buy and sell. Because if you are trading, not swapping, the price is much more accurate in big exchanges.

[logfiles]

Just to give a broader view to OP's perspective, I forgot to mention that I talked about this kind of things some time back. Where that market price doesn't really seem like the actual market price and if you are not keen, you are going to unknowingly lose a huge chuck of your money and then exchange through its execution engine Could easily make some insane profits.

Here was my thread: OKX and the predatory Market rates. Keep your eyes on Market orders folks!

If you are not in a hurry and don't want any shock, use limit orders.

[Darker45]

Of course, you're promoting your own platform.

Anyway, first off, "best rates" aren't necessarily the "best rates". Do your research because every platform claims theirs has the best rate.

If you want what's shown as the exact amount you'll receive, then opt for fixed rate. Choosing floating rate or variable rate would likely give you a different amount from what's initially estimated because it's based on real-time movements of the price.

Slippage is normal, but it seems changes to the estimates aren't purely out of slippage anymore. Perhaps many platforms take advantage of it and are simply cheating, taking cuts from fair estimates. Well, fixed rate is always an option.

Finally, perhaps this is the price to pay for instant exchanges or swaps--no sign-up needed, no KYC, fast, but at a rate much lower than the market's. If you're a trader and not just doing a one-time exchange, using an order book is much better.

[pandakitty]

Slippage is normal, but it seems changes to the estimates aren't purely out of slippage anymore. Perhaps many platforms take advantage of it and are simply cheating, taking cuts from fair estimates. Well, fixed rate is always an option.

Finally, perhaps this is the price to pay for instant exchanges or swaps--no sign-up needed, no KYC, fast, but at a rate much lower than the market's. If you're a trader and not just doing a one-time exchange, using an order book is much better.

Someone should try all the swap exchanges at the same time. You can send the same amount and compare the output for what they announced and what was received after all the spread and fees. If a exchange constantly gives a different quote compared to another that has a more stable and better quote, that would be an easy win.

[nc50lc]

Someone should try all the swap exchanges at the same time. -snip-

And that "someone" should be OP himself.
Unless others have the incentive to do that and willing to pay all of the instant swap exchange's service fee, which sounds like a charity just to satisfy OP's questions.

But here's one fact:
OP himself can do that since his username (the website URL) uses multiple swap service providers.
Just checking his log after a few weeks should produce a good stats. (unless it's fully private)

@OP, you can create a proper "[ANN]" thread in the "Service Announcement" board, here: /index.php?board=84.0

[Zwei]

Someone should try all the swap exchanges at the same time. You can send the same amount and compare the output for what they announced and what was received after all the spread and fees. If a exchange constantly gives a different quote compared to another that has a more stable and better quote, that would be an easy win.

that would be a huge waste of time and money paid as fees to do that, and you would need to do more than one swap on each site to get accurate data.

on instant swap sites at least, if you pick fixed rate, they tell you exactly how much you are going to receive, and they usually display the fee they charge, so no need to do wast any money on swaps to get that info.
if you pick float rate, which is the "best rate", the amount you will receive will depend on the market price when the swap is finalised.

[noorman0]

-snip-
- are there any services where the final rate actually matches what you see?

You mean the AMM model? Crypto volatility itself prevents your orders from getting the rates you see on instant exchanges. But some advanced DEXs, like Uniswap, allow you to place limit orders.

-snip-
- or is some slippage basically normal everywhere now?

Yes, and that's been the norm for most users since these types of exchanges first appeared.

[FinneysTrueVision]

When swapping BTC, block times are going to affect how accurate those rates are. If your fees are optimal, you might only need to wait 10 minutes on average, but if they are too low you might need to wait over an hour for your swap to complete. In that amount of time, the price can diverge significantly from what was originally quoted.

Instant exchanges are also known to provide inaccurate quotes so they can get higher placement on swap aggregators. It ultimately comes down to how much trust you have in a service’s reliability.

[Swapzilla_io]

Interesting to read the replies here.

I actually ran into this while trying to collect some data across different instant swap services.

Was comparing the quoted rate vs the final result, especially when the market started moving.

One thing I noticed: when the market moves up, the final outcome doesn’t always reflect that movement.

Not saying it should, but it’s interesting how this plays out in practice when you compare quote vs execution.

I get that “best rate” usually means the best available quote at the moment of request, not a guaranteed final result.

But in practice, it often feels like market changes just don’t get reflected in the execution fast enough.

So “best rate” ends up being more of a reference point than something that truly reflects the situation at the moment of execution.

Curious if anyone here has actually seen cases where, during an upward move, the final rate adjusted in a better direction?