One cent on bitcoin at 10:13 UTC
How much does it cost to cross the spread on bitcoin? On the big dollar books, almost nothing. Readings from four exchanges’ public order book feeds at 10:13 UTC on November 10, 2026 put the gap between the best bid and the best ask at a single cent on three of them.
| Exchange, BTC/USD | Best bid | Best ask | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kraken | $74,307.10 | $74,307.20 | $0.10 |
| Coinbase Exchange | $74,294.94 | $74,294.95 | $0.01 |
| Bitstamp | $74,295.45 | $74,295.46 | $0.01 |
| Gemini | $74,301.35 | $74,301.36 | $0.01 |
Kraken’s gap was ten times wider for a mechanical reason. Its pair data set a tick size of 0.1 for XBT/USD that morning, while Coinbase’s product list gave BTC-USD a price increment of 0.01. No spread can be narrower than one step of that grid.
Nor does it stay put. Four and a half minutes later, Bitstamp’s gap was $5.25.
Most pairs cost far more to cross
Bitcoin against the dollar is the exception. Kraken’s ticker feed, read at 10:14 UTC the same day, quoted 1,348 pairs marked online, and their median spread was 0.43% of the midpoint, more than 3,000 times the BTC/USD figure. For 233 of them the gap exceeded 2.5%.
The currency you cash out into changes the number too. In that reading bitcoin against the British pound showed a spread of 0.051% and against the Canadian dollar 0.064%, while USDC against the euro sat at 0.011%.
What the gap costs you
An order that fills at once sells at the bid or buys at the ask, so against the midpoint it gives up half the spread. On Kraken’s USDC/EUR book at 10:13:50 UTC, the best bid was 0.8911 euros, with 632,101.779 USDC wanted at that price.
Selling 10,000 USDC into it returns €8,911.00 before the trading fee, 50 cents less than the midpoint of 0.89115 implies. Buy and sell back straight away and you pay the whole gap once.
The SEC’s investor glossary defines the bid as the highest price a buyer will pay and the ask as the lowest a seller will take, and says the bid “will almost always be lower.”
Where the rules put it on show
In the EU, Article 76(9) of MiCA obliges any firm running a crypto trading platform to publish bid and ask prices, and the depth behind them, continuously during trading hours. Article 77(2) covers firms that trade with clients out of their own capital, which must publish a firm price or the method used to set it.
Dealers of that kind can earn the spread themselves. The SEC’s guide to order execution says a broker filling an order from its own inventory “may make money on the ‘spread’.”
An app that shows one sell price gives you nothing to compare it with, which is the FX spread problem in another form. Before a large sale, set that price beside the bid on a public order book for the same pair.