Quote currency matters
Do not rename a BTC/USDT source to BTC/USD without an explicit conversion policy. A stablecoin conversion introduces another input and another timestamp; persist both when a derived USD price is calculated.
Market data · deployment planning
Bitcoin Price Feed API
Specify which Bitcoin market a price represents before connecting it to a broker application: spot BTC/USD, BTC/USDT and derivatives are different instruments.
Source provenance
Keep venue identity, market type and bid/ask timestamps beside the normalized symbol. A composite Bitcoin quote should disclose its eligible sources and the rules for rejecting stale or crossed observations, especially when one venue disconnects.
Requirements to confirm
- Spot or derivative definition
- USD versus stablecoin treatment
- Venue-specific symbol mapping
- Composite input and outage rules
Bring the proposed instrument list, source documentation and consumer workflow to a technical discussion. The agreed integration specification defines coverage, fields, usage permissions and acceptance tests.
Integration brief
Bitcoin Price Feed API: what to agree before connecting
| Instrument scope | Identify the exact underlying, source identifier, quote currency and intended use. |
|---|---|
| Consumer workflow | List trading platforms, charts, risk tools and applications that need the output. |
| Delivery contract | Agree protocol, quote fields, timestamps, source status and recovery behaviour. |
| Production review | Confirm source rights, integration ownership, test evidence and commercial scope. |
Begin with a consumer and instrument inventory
For digital assets, define who consumes the prices and what each system needs to reconstruct a usable quote. An application dashboard, broker platform and historical process can require different delivery rules even when they share one normalized instrument model.
What to test
- Compare instrument definitions before combining or substituting sources.
- Exercise disconnects and confirm the status presented to each consumer.
- Review results with the source, adapter and consuming application owners.
{
"type": "quote",
"symbol": "BTCUSD",
"bid": "100.00",
"ask": "100.10",
"source_time": "2026-10-18T12:00:00.000Z",
"received_at": "2026-10-18T12:00:00.012Z",
"source_id": "example-source",
"status": "illustrative"
}Illustrative engineering example, not live prices or a published API contract. Confirm field names and delivery rules during integration.