Market
A market is a place, physical or electronic, where buyers and sellers leave orders and trade with each other. Its price is simply the last trade between them.
A market needs only two things: people willing to buy and people willing to sell. Each side leaves orders saying how much they want and at what price. When one side accepts the other’s price, a trade happens, and the price of that last trade is what every chart and app shows as “the price”.
Today almost every market is electronic. The buyers and sellers wait in an order book run by an exchange, with the bids on one side and the asks on the other.
Learn more: what is a market? Buyers, sellers and a price.