When Does BTCUSD Actually Move? Hourly Ranges on 10-minute Charts

Educational reference. Measured from 9,042 recorded 10-minute bars of Bitcoin through September 25, 2026.

10:00 is the busiest hour, averaging 222.4 per bar — 2.5× the quietest hour at 03:00.

The same stop is a different stop at different times of day. This is the median high-to-low range of a single 10-minute bar of Bitcoin, hour by hour, measured from 9,042 recorded bars over the last 90 days.

Hour (ET)	Median range	Bars
00:00	89.9	378
01:00	99.0	378
02:00	89.4	378
03:00	88.8	378
04:00	100.7	378
05:00	98.9	378
06:00	89.0	378
07:00	95.0	378
08:00	116.3	378
09:00	150.6	378
10:00	222.4	378
11:00	182.9	378
12:00	147.7	378
13:00	135.7	378
14:00	121.9	378
15:00	106.4	377
16:00	103.9	378
17:00	89.8	374
18:00	111.1	369
19:00	97.9	373
20:00	112.2	372
21:00	130.0	373
22:00	114.6	378
23:00	99.6	378

The spread across the day

The busiest hour is 10:00, averaging 222.4 per bar. The quietest is 03:00 at 88.8. That is a 2.5× difference across the same instrument, the same timeframe, the same trading day.

A stop sized for 03:00 conditions will be caught routinely at 10:00, and a stop sized for 10:00 gives away far more than it needs to overnight. The same number of points does not mean the same thing at every hour.

How this was measured

Every 10-minute bar of Bitcoin recorded in the last 90 days was grouped by the hour it opened, in Eastern time. The figure shown is the median of high minus low within each group — the middle bar of that hour, not the average, so a single outlier session cannot distort it. Hours with fewer than 60 recorded bars are omitted rather than shown on thin evidence.

These are recorded market ranges, not forecasts. Nothing on this page is a projection.