How The Cult Of Money Price Works

Which Exchanges We Use

The Cult of Money Price draws on 11 exchanges, chosen because each publishes a free public price feed and has enough trading to matter.

US exchanges:

• Coinbase
• Kraken
• Gemini
• Bitstamp
• Binance.US
• Crypto.com

International exchanges:

• OKX (its public feed is global OKX; OKX US doesn't publish a separate one)
• Bitget
• KuCoin
• MEXC
• Gate

Our collector pulls the best bid, best ask and 24-hour trading volume for each coin from every exchange once a minute. Each exchange contributes the midpoint between its best bid and best ask. If an exchange's feed doesn't include a bid and ask for a coin, we use its last trade price instead. A coin's price uses whichever of the 11 exchanges list it, so a smaller coin can draw on four exchanges while bitcoin draws on all of them.

How The Average Is Calculated

The Cult of Money Price is a volume-weighted average, which means an exchange where more of a coin trades has more say in the price than one where little trades. Each exchange's weight is its share of the 24-hour dollar volume across all the exchanges that passed our filters that minute.

No exchange can count for more than 40%. When one exchange's volume share would be higher, we hold it at 40% and spread the extra weight across the other exchanges in proportion to their volume. The cap keeps one large venue, or one venue reporting inflated volume, from setting the price on its own. The cap applies when at least three exchanges report a price for the coin. A coin quoted on only one or two exchanges is weighted by volume with no cap. Every exchange that passes our filters also keeps at least a small minimum weight, so a low-volume venue still counts a little.

How We Filter Out Bad Quotes

Before the average is taken, every quote goes through two checks.

• The median check: When at least three exchanges quote a coin, we find the median of their quotes that minute and drop any quote more than 3% away from it. For stablecoins, which are built to hold $1, the limit is 1%. A stale feed, a broken order book or a brief price spike on one exchange gets left out instead of dragging the price.
• The sanity check: We compare every quote with a daily reference price from CoinGecko and reject anything more than 35% away. This protects against a rare failure where several feeds break at once, so the median itself goes wrong. The reference is only a guardrail. It never goes into the average.

If no quote passes both checks, the page keeps showing the last good price with its timestamp and a label saying the data is stale.

The US-Only Price

We publish a second price, the Cult of Money US Price, built the same way from the six US exchanges only: Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Bitstamp, Binance.US and Crypto.com. The US price shows what US customers can buy at, since most US readers can't open accounts on the five international exchanges.

The two prices can drift apart for smaller coins that trade mostly on international exchanges, or during busy markets when US demand runs ahead of the rest of the world. The Cult of Money Price is the headline on every coin page, with the US Price shown right below it. Our coin pages also show the US markets table, with each exchange's bid, ask, spread and distance from our price.

How Stablecoin Quotes Are Converted

Many exchanges price coins in stablecoins such as USDT or USDC rather than US dollars. We convert those quotes to dollars at the live USDT and USDC rates our collector measures that same minute, before they go into the average.

That matters because a stablecoin isn't always worth exactly $1. USDC fell to about 87 cents for a short time in March 2023, after Circle disclosed that $3.3 billion of its reserves sat at the failed Silicon Valley Bank, according to Circle's statement. That meant a quote of 1,000 USDC was worth about $870 that weekend. Our stablecoin tracker shows how far each one has strayed from $1.

DEX Quotes From Uniswap And Jupiter

Every 15 minutes, our collector asks two decentralized exchanges, or DEXs, what a real swap would return. Uniswap quotes come straight from Uniswap v3's quoter contract on Ethereum, and Jupiter covers Solana.

We quote both directions, buying the coin with USDC and selling it back, at $100, $1,000 and $10,000. Each quote records how much you'd get, the pool fee, the price impact of the trade size and the network fee. On Nov 1, 2026, $1,000 of USDC bought about 0.4408 ETH through Uniswap, with about a penny in network fees.

DEX quotes have two jobs:

• The DEX row on coin pages: You can compare buying on a DEX with buying on an exchange, after fees, for coins like Ethereum and Solana.
• A cross-check: If our price and the DEX price differ by more than 2%, an editor gets an alert to look at the feeds.

DEX quotes aren't part of the Cult of Money Price average. Our page on centralized vs. decentralized exchanges explains how the two differ.

Daily Open, High, Low And Close

Daily candles on our charts are built from our own minute-by-minute prices. The open is the first minute's price of the day, the close is the last minute's price, and the high and low are the highest and lowest minute prices in between. Days run on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Our collector started on Nov. 1, 2026. Charts that reach back before then use Coinbase Exchange's public daily price history, which starts in July 2015 for bitcoin, for coins Coinbase lists. Older chart data is labeled with its source.

Limits Of The Cult Of Money Price

The Cult of Money Price is a measure of the market, not a price you're guaranteed to pay. What you pay depends on the exchange's spread, its fees and the size of your order, which is why our coin pages show cost to buy separately.

Other limits:

• Blocked exchanges: Some exchanges refuse automated connections from the US or limit how often a feed can be called. Binance.com and Bybit are two that block our collector, so they're left out.
• Thin markets: Small coins may trade on only one or two of our 11 exchanges, with little volume. Their prices can jump on a single trade, and the 40% cap can't spread the weight when there are only two sources.
• Reported volume: Exchanges report their own trading volume, and we can't check it trade by trade. The 40% cap and the median filter limit how much one exchange's numbers can move the price.
• Outages: When an exchange's feed goes down, its weight drops out until it comes back.

What To Watch Out For

A price on any website is a reference point. Before you buy, check the price and the total cost the exchange shows you on the confirmation screen, including fees.

Prices for small coins with only a few sources deserve extra caution, and our coin pages note how many exchanges list each coin. During fast markets, a price that's even a minute old can differ from what you'll pay.

FAQ

What Is The Cult Of Money Price?

The Cult of Money Price is our own crypto price, recalculated every minute from 11 exchanges. It's a volume-weighted average, with each exchange capped at 40% of the weight and outlier quotes filtered out first.

Why Is Your Price Different From Other Sites?

The Cult of Money Price draws on a different set of exchanges than other sites use, weights them by volume with a 40% cap, and filters outliers before averaging. Small differences of a fraction of a percent are normal between any two price sources.

What Is The Cult Of Money US Price?

The Cult of Money US Price uses the same method but only the six US exchanges: Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Bitstamp, Binance.US and Crypto.com. It reflects what US customers can buy at.

How Often Does The Price Update?

The Cult of Money Price updates every minute. DEX quotes from Uniswap and Jupiter update every 15 minutes, and daily candles are built from the minute data at the end of each day.

Are DEX Prices Included In The Average?

No. Uniswap and Jupiter quotes power the DEX buy and sell comparison on coin pages and act as a cross-check on our price. They aren't part of the volume-weighted average.

Can I Buy At The Cult Of Money Price?

Not exactly. The Cult of Money Price is a market reference, and what you pay depends on the exchange's spread, fees and your order size. Our coin pages show the measured cost to buy at each US exchange.