How does the Exchange Work?

glasswords

I'm looking at the Exchange and I see two sides, one to buy Zen, the other to buy Dilithium.

If I look at it from a "I want Zen" perspective and go to the Sell Zen tab, I see people are offering Zen as low as 88 Dilithium per Zen. Switch back to the "Buy Zen" tab and the lowest rate is 93/Zen. What's with the gap?

It seems like if someone's willing to sell their Zen at 88, it should be offered at 88.
What am I missing?

starkaos

For the Selling Zen tab, there is an excess of offers at 88 dilithium per zen. For the Buying Zen tab, there is an excess of offers at 93 dilithium per zen. So I can either sell my zen at 88 dilithium per zen and get it now or sell it at 93 dilithium per zen and might wait a few days or weeks for the offer to go through.

kiralyn

glasswords wrote: »

It seems like if someone's willing to sell their Zen at 88, it should be offered at 88.
What am I missing?

The thing you're missing is: that's not someone offering their Zen for 88 Dil. It's someone offering 88 Dil for a Zen.

(i.e, on one side, it's people with Zen saying "Give me ____ Dil for my Zen"; on the other side it's people with Dil saying "Give me Zen for my ___ Dil.")

tangolight

You can find more information on the Dilithium Exchange in this article:
http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=770251

shadowwraith77

Basically the numbers you are seeing represent a small fraction of the total market, however when buying zen with dilithium the numbers represent how much ready zen at said dilithium cost is up for instant transaction and vise verse on selling zen.

An example would be if you were buying zen with dilithium and the lowest number shows 100 dilith per zen with 20k zen ready for instant transactions, than you could purchase all 20k zen if you had enough dilithium instantly.

An example when selling zen using the same similar example would show 100 dilith per zen is how much someone is willing to pay and has already put up their dilith on the market for any instant transactions meaning if there was 20k dilith at 100 dilith per zen than you could purchase all 20k dilith for 200 zen when selling.

As with any open market you can set the value at what you wish to sell or buy, but it may take time to work into the systems cycle or for someone willing to pay or sell at your asking ammount.