Fiat prices
The USD figures beside Bitcoin amounts, in portfolio totals, floor prices, fee costs, and the header price chip, come from one Universe-operated market price service that the browser reads once a minute. No exchange API is called from the page.
What happens when there is no quote
Section titled “What happens when there is no quote”- Before the service has answered, and when it cannot answer at all, there is
no price. The USD figure is left out. It is never replaced with a
placeholder number, a last-known guess with no age, or
$0. - The Bitcoin amount is always shown. Fiat is a convenience on top of it, so losing the quote never hides the number that matters.
- A quote that did answer is kept in the browser for up to a day, so a single failed refresh still shows the last measured price rather than nothing.
The price says where it came from and when
Section titled “The price says where it came from and when”Open the fee panel in the header. The line under the price reads the source and the time it was measured, for example “Coinbase, 16:05”.
A quote resting on yesterday’s reading shows yesterday’s time. A stale price is visible rather than silent, which is the whole point: a number with no timestamp is indistinguishable from a fresh one, and that is exactly the confusion this product refuses to create.
Why this one figure is different
Section titled “Why this one figure is different”Core reads chain data from its own infrastructure and says so. The exchange rate is the one figure it does not, because Bitcoin Universe does not run an exchange.
It is read once a minute by the API and shared, so no visitor’s browser contacts the exchange directly. Chain data is never sourced this way.
What to do with it
Section titled “What to do with it”Treat the fiat figure as a convenience for orientation. Every decision that matters, a price, a fee, a total, is denominated in satoshis, and that is what your wallet will sign.