It's a highly desirable new feature.

BTC Markets has added stop limits, most likely by very popular demand.

Stop limits can be a cryptocurrency trader's best friend. When set up correctly, they automatically take action at specified price points, letting traders potentially protect themselves from swift downturns, profit from rises and sleep at night.

Rejoice

Australian exchanges are often a good way for Australians to trade AUD without needing to pay some of the more severe costs associated with international exchange fees and cross-border transfers.

But advanced trading platform-type exchanges such as BTC Markets are less common in Australia than more beginner-friendly platforms. This might see a lot of people take their trading to potentially less-safe overseas crypto-to-crypto exchanges, where people might have little recourse if something goes wrong.

With stop limits now available on BTC Markets, people might have a lot of reasons to be happy.

The Australian cryptocurrency ecosystem is relatively small compared to the global norm, and the number of exchanges which offer advanced order types is smaller still. And stop limits might be one of the more significant order types for anyone who wants to keep orders open while they sleep at night or are otherwise not able to dash to their trading station at a moment's notice.

The functionality is initially for AUD/BTC trades only, but will be "the first of many advanced order types," BTC Markets says.

In more detail, stop limit orders let a trader set a "stop" price at which trades will execute or stop executing.

For example, if someone's going away for the weekend, they might place a bitcoin stop limit order at somewhere below current prices. So if bitcoin crashes while they're gone, their set-up will automatically try to sell the specified amount of bitcoin for at least the specified price instead of just riding it down. Or someone might set a stop order when buying to automatically buy a dip for no more than the specified amount if bitcoin moves.

Or someone might set up both a sell and a buy stop, which could automatically buy low and sell high (or vice versa if they mess it up) as prices fluctuate.

The prevalence of stop orders has also changed the markets in its own way. It has introduced unscrupulous tactics like stop hunting in larger markets, where people might try to move prices enough to trigger a lot of stops and then buy them up.

Some people might also be setting up stop orders at unrealistic prices just in case someone fat fingers an order and accidentally adds or forgets to add a zero or puts the decimal point in the wrong place when trading.