What is an Iceberg order and how to use it?

An iceberg trade is most often executed by large institutional investors. 

Iceberg orders, also known as reverse orders, are mostly used by market makers, which is another word for an individual or firm who is providing offers and bids. When it comes to such big crypto transactions, we mostly talk about institutional crypto investors. They often trade in big amounts of cryptocurrencies, which may have a huge impact on the market.

As a watcher, it’s possible to look up the order in the order books, but only a small part of the market maker iceberg orders is visible on level-2 order books. Level-2 order books, in the crypto world, contain all bids and asks on an exchange including price, volume and timestamp — real-time data collection it is. 

They call it the tip of the iceberg for a reason: The rest of the order is “under the water’s surface.” For smaller investors like private traders, placing an iceberg order is unusual.