Prices and trading

What a price is

A price is what a club's token costs today.

Every price on TopFlight is part of one total that always adds up to $1, so a price is also a percentage. Chelsea at 6.4 cents hold 6.4 percent of the total. If Chelsea rise to 9 cents, the other tokens have given up 2.6 cents between them.

Buying

Choose a club, enter an amount, and the trade completes in one step. The quantity of tokens is shown before you confirm.

The market maker's fee (see below) is the only cost of making a trade today, aside from slippage due to order size. In the beta the transaction charge is covered for you.

Buying raises the price as the order fills, so a large order completes at a higher average price than the price it started at.

The market maker

Trades complete against the market maker, the automated counterparty that quotes a buy price and a sell price in any size, at any hour, on all of the twenty clubs. See market maker.

The Field

Every club has a second token, the Field, e.g. Field v Spurs. The ticker is prefixed with an F, e.g. FTOT. Buying it means you own every club except e.g. Spurs.

A club's token and its Field always add up to $1. Field v Spurs costs $1 minus the Spurs price, and it rises when Spurs fall. Spurs at 7 cents makes Field v Spurs 93 cents. If Spurs fall to 5 cents, Field v Spurs is worth 95 cents.

Properties of the Field:

• It is paid for up front, out of money already held, the same as buying a club.
• The Field gets paid as well. See Getting paid.

Selling

Selling completes in one step at the price quoted.

The fees

Two fees can apply to a trade, and they belong to different parties.

The market maker's fee. Each market maker sets its own fee and keeps it. Any market maker can quote TopFlight's clubs, on its own terms. The market maker that quotes the twenty clubs today charges 0.5 percent, with a minimum of a tenth of a cent, on the way in and on the way out. It is worked out on the cheaper side of the trade, the cheaper of the club and its Field, so the Field of a club priced under 50 cents is charged less than the full rate.

The protocol fee. TopFlight's own fee sits beneath every market maker's fee, and applies whichever market maker a trade completes against. It is currently off. It can be set to at most 1 percent, and setting it will be a decision for the governance token. See Governance.

Next: Getting paid.