UTC close: why two sources show different prices
Crypto trades around the clock, so where does a day end? UTC midnight, rolling 24 hours, different exchanges and pairs, and how to read a daily change correctly. Educational content.
Two price pages, the same asset, the same minute, and two different "24h change" figures. Usually neither is wrong. They measure different things.
Crypto has no closing bell
A stock exchange opens and closes. Crypto markets trade around the clock, every day. A "daily" figure therefore needs a chosen boundary, and sources choose differently. So when a page shows a daily close, it shows the price recorded at a moment that page has chosen.
Calendar day or rolling 24 hours
Kraken's ticker data shows both kinds side by side (Kraken API: Get Ticker Information):
- Today: values counted from midnight UTC. The documentation states that today's prices start at midnight UTC.
- Last 24 hours: a rolling window that ends now.
At 06:00 in Budapest in summer (04:00 UTC), "today" covers four hours, while "last 24 hours" covers a full day. The two change figures can differ even in sign. Kraken's ticker also gives the opening price of the day as a separate field, so a "today" change and a "24h" change can be computed from different starting prices.
Five reasons two sources differ
- The boundary: UTC midnight, local midnight, or rolling 24 hours.
- The exchange: each exchange has its own trades and its own order book.
- The pair: BTC/USD, BTC/EUR and BTC/USDT are different markets; a currency conversion adds another rate.
- The price type: last trade, mid price, or an average such as VWAP.
- The timing: a page refreshed a minute earlier shows an older number.
How to read a daily figure
- Check which boundary the page uses.
- Check the exchange or aggregate and the trading pair.
- Note the time zone of any timestamp: UTC and Budapest time differ by one or two hours depending on the season.
- Compare like with like: a daily close from one source with a daily close from the same source.
- For candles, the OHLC interval tells you when each one starts.
Where to see the data
The Market Observation pages show sourced market data, and the data sources page names where it comes from. Free and Pro receive the same data with no delay; Pro adds 20 price levels of your own choosing and CSV/JSON export (pricing).
Related: OHLC candle data · Markets · Converter
Educational content. Not investment advice.
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