Why the same coin costs different amounts on different exchanges

There is no such thing as the price of bitcoin. There is a price on each venue, set by that venue's own order book, and a price site shows you a volume-weighted average across many of them — a number nobody can actually trade at.

When we captured live order books across seventeen exchanges at the same moment, the best ask for bitcoin ranged from about $62,785 to $62,900. Roughly a fifth of a percent, at the same second, for the same asset.

Where the difference comes from

Separate books

Each exchange matches its own buyers and sellers. Arbitrage traders keep the books close together, but not identical: moving money between venues takes time and costs fees, so a small gap persists because closing it is not worth anyone's while.

The quote currency

Some venues price bitcoin in dollars and others in a stablecoin. Those are different instruments. If the stablecoin itself is trading slightly off its peg, the quoted price shifts with it — which is one reason USD-quoted and USDT-quoted venues cluster separately.

Spread

The gap between the best buy and best sell price. On deep venues it was effectively zero in our measurement; on thinner ones we saw a spread of around 0.026%, which you pay on entry and again on exit.

Depth

How much is available near the best price. Within half a per cent of the top of the book, some venues showed hundreds of bitcoin and others under twenty. That does not affect a small trade at all, and it decides what a large one costs.

What this means in practice

• For retail-sized trades, the price differences between major venues are trivial compared with the fee differences. Effective cost ranged from about 0.057% to 0.60% across the venues we measured — that gap is fees, not prices.
• The price you see on a chart is not the price you will get. Your price is the best offer on your venue, plus the fee, plus any slippage.
• The apparent arbitrage between venues is almost never available to retail. By the time you have deposited, traded and withdrawn, the fees and the delay have consumed it — and that is before considering whether both venues will let you move money quickly.
• A venue with a persistently better price and no depth is not offering you a better price.

The number that actually matters

Not the quoted price but the effective cost: what you pay against the market mid-price, all in. That is the measurement in our exchange rating, and it is the reason Coinbase at 0.60% is six times more expensive than the cheapest venues at 0.10% despite quoting almost the same bitcoin price.

The price differences between exchanges are a rounding error. The fee differences are six-fold.

The short version

Prices differ because each exchange runs its own book, quotes in its own currency, and has its own depth. At retail sizes those differences are far smaller than the fee differences, so compare effective cost rather than quoted price — and treat cross-venue arbitrage as something that has already been done by people faster than you.