Bitcoin Price - BTC/USD : $88,514.53

The Bitcoin price is based off the cost of one whole Bitcoin, similar to the way that shares in a company are priced in a share market. Unlike traditional share markets, however, you may buy and sell fractional amounts of Bitcoin. For example, if the Bitcoin market price is $12 000, you can buy 0.5 Bitcoin for $6 000. You can read more about this in the What is Bitcoin page. The price of Bitcoin on Independent Reserve is purely based off the trading behaviours of our customers. As explained in the How to buy Bitcoin page, Independent Reserve is purely an open order book exchange. We do not supply Bitcoin - when you buy Bitcoin here you are simply buying it directly off another Independent Reserve customer who is looking to sell. The Bitcoin price will go up when there are more buyers than sellers, and the price will go down when there are more sellers than buyers.

It's important to understand that with Bitcoin and most cryptocurrencies, exchanges are not connected. This means that on one exchange the price can conceivably be quite different to another exchange. If the market price between two exchanges diverges enough, this presents an arbitrage opportunity, where Bitcoin can be bought on the exchange with the lower price, transferred to the other exchange, and then sold for a profit. This is the main mechanism that keeps prices on different exchanges in line with each other.

The Bitcoin price has historically been quite volatile when compared with traditional share markets. This makes it a commodity to trade, where proportionally high gains (and losses!) can be realised in relatively quick time periods.

The charts above display the price of Bitcoin (BTC) in US Dollars (USD).

Understanding the Bitcoin price chart requires analysing key visual elements. Candlesticks represent price movement within a specific timeframe between opening and closing prices. You can select the range of each candle, for example, 1 hour, 4 hours, 1 day, 1 week, etc.

Green candles signify a rise in the price of Token, while red candles indicate a decline in price. The length of the candle depicts the highest and lowest prices reached during the selected period.

You can add indicators to enrich your pricing data. You can add trendlines, moving averages, Bolinger bands, etc. to see potential support or resistance levels where price movements might stall. Volume bars reflect at the bottom of the Bitcoin (BTC) trading activity, with higher bars indicating periods of increased buying or selling pressure.