Instant Convert

A user holding BTC who wants ETH does not want an order book. Instant Convert gives them one screen: pick what to give, pick what to receive, press Preview conversion, read a price that is guaranteed for a few seconds, press Convert. The fee is shown on its own line, apart from the rate, and the result is in their balance before the page redraws.

The platform is the other side of every convert. It pays out of a house account you fund, prices each convert from your exchange provider's order book, and can hedge the position that leaves it holding. You earn a fee on every convert and a spread built into the rate.

What it is

Instant Convert is a quote-and-execute desk that runs on top of your existing balances.

• A guaranteed quote. POST /api/convert/quote prices the convert and writes it to the database before the user sees it. POST /api/convert/order executes that stored row exactly, never a re-priced rate. A quote lives for convertQuoteTtlSeconds (default 10 seconds) and executes at most once.
• The house pays. A system account, the house, is the counterparty. In one database transaction the user's currency goes to the house, the house's currency goes to the user, and the fee goes to the Super Admin. For every currency the total across all wallets does not move, so the pool-backing reconciliation sees nothing to explain.
• Priced from the book the hedge would trade on. Every convert is priced as the trades the house would make to replace it through USDT (sell what the user gives for USDT, then buy what they receive with it; a single trade when either side is USDT), walking your exchange provider's order books for the size, with each trade's taker fee included. A second, independent public venue has to agree with that price before it is offered, and it is read again just before the convert executes (the last look).
• Inventory-bounded. A convert into a currency closes when paying it would take the house below that currency's floor. Per-convert, per-user daily, platform hourly and unhedged-exposure caps bound the rest.

There are three ways a convert can end. Under the To field the user picks My balance or An address; the platform picks which of the two address routes applies, from the currency, the wallet type and whether Convert & Send is open for that currency:

What it is not

• Not a DEX and not an order book. Users do not trade with each other and no user order ever rests on a book. The order book is only where the price is read from and, if you turn hedging on, where the house trades its own position.
• Not risk-free inventory. The house holds real balances that you put there. They can be spent down to their floor by users, they carry market risk while unhedged, and a hedge order placed with them costs the venue's fee.
• Not a cross-wallet transfer. A balance convert never crosses wallet types. Moving value between Spot and Ecosystem stays with the platform's wallet transfer. A Convert & Send may take its input from either wallet type, because its output never lands in a balance.
• Not a bridge. Convert & Send pays on the chain the user picks, from coins the house already holds on that chain. Nothing is moved between chains to make a payout possible.
• Not every coin. Ecosystem balance converts are limited to currencies with exactly one enabled withdrawal chain of a pooled family (UTXO coins, EVM tokens, TRC-20 tokens, TRX), because a converted balance has no chain and must be payable from a pool on whichever chain it is withdrawn from. Native EVM coins, SOL, SPL tokens and multi-chain tokens can be received only through Convert & Send, and cannot be given on Ecosystem at all. TON and XMR sends are not built.
• Not on mobile. There is no screen for it in the mobile app in this release. A convert still appears in the app's transaction history, as an unrecognised type, without breaking it.

How it makes money

Two charges, booked differently. Both are yours to set.

The fee (convertFeeBps, default 20 bps, 0.2%) is taken in the currency the user gives, on the amount they give. It is credited to the Super Admin wallet of that currency and wallet type in the same transaction as the convert, with an admin_profit row of type CONVERT. If the fee cannot land, the convert does not happen. A Super Admin converting pays no fee, because it would be credited to themselves.

The spread (convertSpreadBps, default 50 bps, 0.5%) is built into the rate on top of the order-book price and each taker fee. It is not credited to anyone at the time. It stays in the house's inventory as the difference between what the house took in and what it paid out, and it becomes profit only when that inventory is disposed of at or near the price it was quoted at: by the hedger, or by later converts in the other direction. Hedge fees, house-movement fees and gas the house burns come out of it.

Realised spread profit is computed per currency and per day from the house's cost lots, and a daily profit sweep can move it to the Super Admin wallet and book it as CONVERT revenue. The sweep is off by default. See Profit & loss.

What you need for each part

Where to start