BTCUSD Pip Calculator

A pip on BTCUSD is smaller than any price the market shows

On a four-decimal currency pair a pip is a move of 0.0001 in the price, and that convention holds across every major pair. Applied literally to bitcoin, 0.0001 of the price is a hundredth of a US cent. No CFD platform quotes bitcoin to four decimals, so that unit never appears on a screen and never moves money on an account.

The word pip still gets used for bitcoin, and it is used to mean two different things. Most often it means one dollar of price movement — the unit a trader plans in, because a stop of two thousand dollars is a sentence that means something. Sometimes it means the smallest price increment the platform displays, which is the unit the platform counts in. On a coin quoted to two decimals those two are a hundred apart, and the same "200 pips" is either a small move or a large one depending on which the speaker meant.

Resolve it the same way you would resolve it on gold or an index: put on a size you know, move the price by exactly one dollar, and read what the platform says the position gained or lost. Whatever the platform calls that distance is the unit it counts in. The tools on this page take dollars of price movement directly, so they work whichever convention you are quoted.

Why counting ticks does not work on bitcoin

A tick is an absolute distance, and the coins sit at wildly different prices. At a price of 100,000 with a tick of 0.01, a one percent move is 100,000 ticks. The equivalent figure on EURUSD is around a hundred pips. Three orders of magnitude separate the two, which is why a stop described as "two thousand ticks" carries no information at all without the price next to it.

It also drifts on a single coin over time. A tick count calibrated when bitcoin was half its current price describes half as much market movement today, because the same percentage move now needs twice as many ticks to deliver it. The tick value tool above reports how many ticks sit inside a one percent move and how small one tick is against the price, so the number you are quoting can be checked against the price it belongs to.

Planning in dollars or in percent avoids the problem entirely. Dollars convert straight into money once you know the size; percent stays comparable across coins and across years. Ticks are for reading a platform, not for planning a trade.

One lot of BTCUSD is not one bitcoin everywhere

Forex has a convention that saves everyone the trouble of asking: one standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency. Crypto has no equivalent. One broker puts one whole coin behind a lot, another puts a hundredth of a coin, and others size in contracts or in notional instead of in coin at all. A lot size copied from a screenshot, a signal or a forum post therefore does not transfer between accounts, and the same "1.00 lot" can be a hundredfold different position on two platforms.

The figure that actually transfers is how much money one dollar of movement shifts per one lot. Once you have it, the contract behind it stops mattering: tick value, position size and profit all follow from it by multiplication. That is why the field this page asks for is coin units per lot and not a broker name — and why the page prints no single "one lot of bitcoin is worth X" number, since any such number would be wrong on some brokers.

How to get your own numbers

Three ways, in order of how much they can be trusted:

1. Read it off an order ticket. Stage a 1.00 lot with a stop one hundred dollars away and read the loss the platform displays. Divide by one hundred. If 1.00 lot with a hundred-dollar stop shows a loss of 100.00, one dollar of movement is worth 1.00 per lot, which means one lot is one coin. This needs no specification and no assumptions, and it is the method to use if the other two disagree.
2. Open the contract specification. Most platforms expose it from the market watch or symbol list. Look for contract size, tick value, tick size, minimum volume and volume step. The contract size tells you the coin units per lot directly; the tick value and tick size let you derive it.
3. Work backwards from a closed trade. Take a trade you have already closed, divide the profit or loss by the dollars the price travelled and then by the lot size. The result is the money per dollar per lot your account actually produced, including any conversion your account currency forced.

Write the number down. It is the single input that turns any crypto price back into money, and unlike the price it does not change day to day.

A dollar stop is not the same trade at every price

Dollars are an absolute distance and crypto prices move through wide ranges. A stop of five hundred dollars is half a percent at a price of 100,000 and a full percent at 50,000. The same number of dollars is twice as much market movement at the lower price, and it will be hit far more often by ordinary noise. Crypto has doubled and halved before, so a dollar stop you calibrated in one regime is a materially different trade in another.

Converting to a percentage — stop distance divided by the price, times one hundred — is the only stop measure that stays comparable across coins and across time. The position size tool above reports it whenever you fill in the price, alongside the money figure. The money figure is what you risk; the percentage is what you are actually betting on.

The minimum size may already be bigger than your risk

This is the part that catches people on crypto specifically. If one lot is one whole coin and the smallest size your broker accepts is 0.01 lot, that smallest position still moves one hundredth of a coin — which at a price of 100,000 is a thousand dollars of exposure for every hundred dollars the price travels. A trader with a small account and a five-hundred-dollar stop cannot get down to the size that fits the risk, because the broker will not accept it.

The check takes one field. Enter your smallest allowed lot in the position size tool above and it will tell you whether that minimum already risks more than your limit. If it does, the trade cannot be taken at that stop distance on that account — the answer is a wider stop only if the stop has a reason to be where it is, and otherwise no trade at all. Rounding the size down below the broker minimum is not an option, and rounding the risk up to make the trade fit is how accounts go.

What happens when the CFD closes and the coin keeps trading

The underlying coin trades continuously, but a CFD on it follows the hours of whatever is offering it, and many crypto CFDs stop quoting over the weekend. When quoting resumes, the price reflects two days of movement in a market that never paused, and the CFD opens at a level far from where it closed with no trades in between to fill an order. A stop is an instruction to close at the market once it is triggered; it is not a guarantee of the price.

There is a second gap that has nothing to do with hours. The CFD price is derived from somewhere — an index of venues, the broker's own book, or a reference rate — and it does not have to equal the price on the exchange chart you are watching. Two screens showing different prices for the same coin is normal, and a stop placed from one of them can trigger at a level the other never printed.

Both push realised losses away from the calculated one, never toward it. Treat the output above as a ceiling on size rather than a target.

What this page deliberately does not assume

No contract size, no tick size, no margin rate, no financing rate and no live price. Every one of those is set by the broker or by the market, and every one of them is something this page asks you to supply or leaves out of the calculation.

Financing is the one most often forgotten. A crypto CFD held overnight carries a financing charge in whichever direction the position runs, and the rate is in the contract specification rather than derivable from anything on this page. The tools above report the profit or loss from price movement, before commission, financing and spread — which is the number position sizing needs, and not the number that lands in the account.

Frequently asked questions

What is a pip on BTCUSD?

There is no standard answer. Applied literally, a pip would be a move of 0.0001 in the price, which is a hundredth of a US cent and smaller than any price a platform displays. In practice the word is used for either one dollar of price movement or the smallest displayed increment, which are a hundred apart on a coin quoted to two decimals. Stage a known size, move the price by one dollar, and read what the platform reports.

How much is one lot of BTCUSD?

It depends entirely on the broker, and this is the field where crypto differs most from forex. Some put one whole coin behind a lot, some a hundredth, some size in contracts rather than in coin. Enter the coin units per lot from your own contract specification into the tick value tool above and the rest of the page follows from it.

How do I calculate position size for crypto?

Divide the money you are willing to lose by the stop distance in dollars, then by the money one dollar of movement is worth per one lot. Risking 100 with a 500-dollar stop at 1.00 per dollar per lot gives 100 ÷ 500 ÷ 1 = 0.20 lot. Check the result against the smallest size your broker accepts, because on crypto that minimum can already exceed the risk.

Can I use a forex lot size calculator for crypto?

Not directly. A forex calculator assumes one lot is 100,000 units and that a stop is measured in pips of a defined size, and neither assumption holds on a crypto CFD. The arithmetic is identical once the inputs are changed — money at risk, distance to the stop, value of one unit of distance — which is what the position size tool above does with dollars instead of pips and coin units instead of a fixed contract.

What is a crypto risk reward calculator?

The same ratio as anywhere else: what you stand to gain against what you stand to lose. On crypto the ratio is usually worked in dollars rather than in pips, because a dollar distance is the unit you can actually mark on a chart. Enter your stop distance in the profit tool above and it returns the result in R — the profit or loss divided by what the stop would have cost — so a 2,000-dollar gain on a 1,000-dollar stop reads as 2R whatever the coin or the price.

Why does my stop in dollars mean different things at different prices?

Because dollars are an absolute distance and the price is not fixed. Five hundred dollars is half a percent at 100,000 and a full percent at 50,000, so the same number of dollars is twice as much market movement at the lower price. Dividing the stop by the price gives the measure that stays comparable, and the position size tool above prints it whenever a price is entered.

Does the tick size matter for position sizing?

Not for the size itself — a dollar of movement is worth the same however finely the price is displayed. It matters for reading your platform, because any figure the platform reports in ticks has to be multiplied by the tick size before it means anything in money. The tick value tool above does that conversion both ways.

The lot size calculator sizes a currency-pair position from a stop measured in pips. The pip calculator covers all 30 forex and metals instruments. The risk reward calculator takes the ratio on its own, and the US30 pip calculator does the same job for index CFDs, where the contract size problem looks the same but the unit is an index point.