[runeks]

> You can get off what appears to be very large amounts of BTC with minimal slippage most times of the day.

I wrote a script[1] that pulls down the public order books for Bitstamp, GDAX and Bitfinex, because I was interested in seeing the depth of the BTCUSD market, and right now you can offload:

258, 301 and 325 BTC on GDAX, Bitfinex and Bitstamp, respectively (total: 884 BTC), at 1% slippage for 3,544,921, 4,152,783 and 4,452,134 USD, respectively (total: $12.1m).

[1] https://github.com/runeksvendsen/orderbook

[hendzen]

Those market depth numbers are probably thinner than they seem, there is no regulation of spoofing/layering and it would be instructive to look at the cancellation rate of passive orders originally placed deep in the book when market price subsequently approaches the resting limit price.

Of course if you want to move larger amounts there are specialized OTC markets that handle large block trades, e.g. Cumberland Mining. Of course the lit exchanges are important for price discovery.

It would be interesting to compare the BTC market depth as a percentage of market value to other exchange traded assets.