Understanding Conversions

A conversion is a transaction that enables you to buy or sell any two Bitso-supported assets at a fixed rate rather than at dynamic market prices. For example, the Bitso app creates conversions when you buy or sell cryptocurrencies. A conversion's underlying operation is a trade, and it might be necessary to execute several trades to complete the conversion amount.

Users benefit from conversions in the following ways:

• They let them know the exact amount of assets they will receive or need to spend at a fixed rate.
• They enable them to select any two currencies supported by Bitso to buy or sell without placing orders in a trading book or worrying whether a given currency pair exists in a book. You can convert a couple of currencies even if a trading book does not exist for them because Bitso's Conversion Engine has the ability to hop among available books to perform the needed conversion.

Conversions have a specific flow:

1. Request a conversion quote: Use the method POST /api/v4/currency_conversions specifying the currencies to convert as well as the amount, and the call returns a conversion rate, which is fixed and valid for the next 30 seconds.
2. Execute the conversion quote: The request-quote call also provides a quote ID (id), which identifies the quote to submit to Bitso's Conversion Engine. Use the method PUT /api/v4/currency_conversions/{quote_id} to execute your conversion. A successful conversion returns a conversion ID (oid), which is useful to track your conversion.
3. Track your conversion: After submitting your conversion quote, you can retrieve the conversion details and determine its status with the method GET /api/v4/currency_conversions/{conversion_id}.

The following articles explain the details of each of these steps.