Spot Trading on Bybit: A Beginner’s Guide to Buying and Selling Cryptocurrencies

TL;DR
This guide explains how to start spot trading on Bybit, walking you through the basics of buying and selling cryptocurrencies to help you trade with confidence.

Bybit is one of the world’s most popular exchanges (i.e. over 40M global users), due to its huge selection of cryptos, trading options, and additional services. So, it’s understandable for beginners to feel lost when starting with their initial trades.

Well, there’s no need to despair, because this guide is your Bybit Spot Trading Course 101. But, the following is designed for those who have already set up and funded their Bybit accounts. If you haven’t taken these initial steps, then first see our Comprehensive Guide for Beginners.

Bybit’s Spot Trading Course 101 is now in session!

Initial Setup: Moving Funds into Your Spot Trading Account

Before you can initiate a spot trade, you’ll first need to move funds from your Funding account into your Spot account. Remember that your entire Bybit account actually has three smaller “buckets” where you can hold funds. These buckets are your Funding account, your Spot account, and your Derivatives account.

Your Funding account is the gateway between moving funds in and out of Bybit, and your Spot and Derivatives accounts are where you perform the actual trades. So, you need funds in these latter two before you can make any trades. Note that there’s no fees when moving funds between these buckets, so don’t worry about that.

To move funds from your Funding account to your Spot account, click the “Assets” sub-menu at the top-right of your Bybit account. You’ll be taken to your “Assets Overview” page, where you can see your three accounts and how much funds are in each of them.

Then, click the “Transfer” icon in your Funding account menu.

From there, select your Spot account to receive the transfer, and the coin and amount. Click “Confirm”, and your funds will be transferred instantly.

Bybit’s Trading Desk Overview

Before we go through a step-by-step example of a trade, let’s first review your Bybit trading desk.

It’s good to be comfortable with your trading desk because this is where all the action happens. This is where you set up, execute, and monitor your trades, as well as inspect the order book and perform technical analysis. To get to your spot trading desk, just hover over the “Trade” sub-menu at the top of your account, and click “Spot Trading”.

Here’s your trading desk, in all its glory. Let’s go through the major components.

At the top left is your trading pair menu. Just hover over the menu icon, and the trading pair menu will pop down. This is where you select the assets you want to trade. Below, you can see that I’ve selected the BTC/USDT trading pair.

Next is your price chart and time-frame. Below, you can see that I’m viewing bitcoin’s price as denominated in USDT, on the hourly time-frame.

Moving on to your order book. This is where you can see the total amount of limit buy and sell orders that have been initiated on Bybit’s exchange, but are waiting to be filled. In other words, this is a live-look at how much buy and sell pressure there is at various price levels below and above the current market price.

Then there’s your order maker. This is where you set up and execute your trades.

Finally, you have your order status menu. This shows your pending orders (i.e. unfilled), as well as your completed trades and your trade history.

That’s your trading desk. Now, this is an extremely brief overview of a very deep product, so I encourage you to delve deeper into all of these components. Read more about Bybit’s Derivatives market (futures, options, perpetual).

Basic Spot Trade: A Step-By-Step Example

Now let’s go through the process of making a basic spot trade. Since you’re familiar with your trading desk, this will be easy to grasp.

Let’s say that you want to purchase bitcoin with USDT at the current market price. To do that, you need to do the following:

1. In the order pair menu, make sure that your BTC/USDT order pair has been selected.
2. In the order maker, ensure that the “Trade” icon has been selected (will usually be default).
3. The “Spot” icon has been selected.
4. The “Buy” icon has been selected (i.e. you’re buying bitcoin with USDT).
5. The “Market” purchase icon has been selected.
6. Specify the amount of USDT you want to spend.
7. Click the “Buy BTC” icon.

And that’s it! You’ve now purchased bitcoin with USDT, and you’ll see the completed order in your order status menu. Congratulations!

Market Orders Vs. Limit Orders

When making spot trades, you’ll generally want to use limit orders over market orders. That’s because you’ll usually trade your assets at better prices with limit orders, especially if you’re being reasonable with your limit price levels.

Limit orders are your bread and butter when trading spot, so it’s time to get familiar with them.

The Big Exception: Use Market Orders When Prices Will Soon be Out of Reach

The big exception to what’s stated above is that you’ll want to use market orders when you believe that current prices will soon be out of reach.

For example, if bitcoin normally trades at $60K, but the market tanks and bitcoin quickly drops to $50K, and you believe that this price is an absolute bargain that won’t last long, then you’ll want to use a market order to immediately buy up the bitcoin. Using a limit buy order at an even lower price (e.g. $49K) in this scenario is very risky because most likely that order will never be filled.

To put it another way, your “greed” to buy bitcoin at an even deeper discount resulted in you not buying any at all, and you missed your $50K window (i.e. assuming bitcoin bounced hard and price is now much higher).

And of course, this same concept works in the opposite direction when it comes to selling assets.

Your Bread and Butter: Limit Orders

Here’s your three main considerations when it comes to setting your limit buy and sell orders: (1) your risk versus reward (RR), (2) your forecasted price (FP), and (3) your time-frame (TF). All three need to be factored together when making your decisions.

For example, let’s say you’ve got a stack of bitcoin that you want to sell. Well, your RR says that the higher you set your limit sell order above the current market price, the more reward you’ll get if it’s filled, but also the less likely it is to ever get filled!

And you must consider your FP when thinking about your RR. If you’re very confident that bitcoin will indeed hit that specified higher price, then theoretically you’ve got less risk. Finally there’s your TF. How quickly do you want to sell your bitcoin? Perhaps you’re confident that bitcoin will hit $100K, but if it takes another five years to hit that price, are you OK with waiting this long?

So moving forward, try to consider your RR, FP, and TF together when setting your limit buy and sell orders.

Best Technical Analysis Indicators for Spot Trading

You’ll want to begin incorporating some technical analysis (TA) when considering and executing your market and limit orders. Entire courses are devoted to TA, so we won’t get into those weeds here. But to be brief, TA is a tool you can use when considering forecasted prices in the short and medium time-frames.

To access and setup all of your technical indicators on Bybit, click the “Indicators” icon located just above your price chart. From there, you can search for the indicator that you want to add onto your chart. It’s that easy.

Now that you know how to find them, let’s review the most essential TA indicators for spot trading. However, keep in mind that we are just barely scratching the surface here.

Price and Volume

Price and volume is the fundamental backbone of TA.

Do some research about how to think about price and volume in relation to forcasting future prices. But briefly stated, volume can help confirm or invalidate a particular price trend. And note that Bybit’s charts include volume out-of-the-box.

Moving Averages

Moving averages (MAs) often prove to be important support and resistance levels.

MAs can be calculated as either simple or exponential moving averages. Google this. Key moving averages in the crypto markets are the 50 day, 100 day, and 200 day moving averages.

MACD

MACD stands for moving average convergence/divergence.

This is a momentum indicator that can help you identify ideal points for buying or selling, because MACD measures price trend momentum. This is one of the most popular and well-known technical indicators.

RSI

RSI, or relative strength index, is another popular momentum indicator that can signal whether there is bullish or bearish price momentum.

When RSI crosses below the “oversold” line (i.e. 30), that can be a sign to buy. Similarly, when RSI crosses above the “over-bought” line (e.g. 70), that can prove to be an ideal time to sell.

Memecoins on Bybit

Bybit is also the place to be if you’re looking to dive into the memecoin craze. It has a user-friendly interface, advanced trading features, and strong security. There are a few things to keep in mind when buying and selling your memecoins on this platform, so we wrote a quick guide on memecoins on Bybit for you.

Trade with leverage

Using leverage on your crypto trades seems complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. So we also wrote a quick guide on understanding leverage on Bybit. Here, you’ll learn the important fundamentals and elements of leverage, where you can use leverage on Bybit, how to initiate a basic leverage trade, and the top strategies to use when levering your trades.

Mastering Trading Course – by Lark Davis

Want to take your trading skills on Bybit up a notch? Check out the Mastering Trading Course, created by Lark Davis himself. Inside, you’ll find practical, step-by-step guidance on reading market signals and using technical analysis tools. Plus, there’s a dedicated module on how to get the most out of Bybit—perfect for anyone aiming to become a confident, skilled trader on the platform. Whether you’re new to trading or looking to sharpen your strategies, this course has everything you need to trade smarter and with real confidence.

Closing Thoughts

As the above guide shows, even the most basic spot trades have multiple considerations that traders should keep in mind. So for beginners, taking the time to really understand your Bybit trading desk, market versus limit orders, and basic technical indicators will provide a foundation for your trading success. And this foundation will be necessary in order to incorporate more advanced strategies into your trading tool-kit.

ps. we compared Bybit vs Coinbase and Bybit vs Binance, might be interesting to give that a read too.