Where our exchange rates come from

When you convert euros to dollars inside the platform, the rate has to come from somewhere. We now take it from the European Central Bank's daily reference rates: published each business day at 16:00 CET, free, and the same number everyone else can read.

Why a public fixing

An exchange rate a client cannot check is an invitation to distrust. A fixing published by a central bank can be verified by anyone with a browser, which changes the conversation from "is this rate fair" to "this is the fixing, and here is our spread".

The rate has a date

We record two different moments for every price: when we fetched it, and the moment the rate itself describes. They are not the same. The ECB fixing published on Friday still describes Friday when you read it on Sunday, and showing it with a Sunday timestamp would be a small lie that becomes a large one during a weekend of market movement.

So a daily fixing is displayed as a date, not as a time. A crypto price, which really is a moment, keeps its clock.

Staleness has different meanings

A crypto quote minutes old is stale. A fiat fixing four days old is normal — there is no fixing on a weekend or a public holiday. Treating both with one threshold would either block legitimate conversions every Sunday or accept a badly outdated crypto price. They now have separate limits.

What you see

Before you convert, you are shown the rate, its date, the spread and the amount you will receive. The quote can be used once. If you let it expire, you get a new one rather than a surprise — a quote that could be replayed is a way to trade against us at yesterday's price, and it was closed deliberately.