How much does Bitcoin move in 15 seconds, 1 minute and 5 minutes?

Typically $5 in 15 seconds, $15 in a minute and $37 in five (Sep–Oct 2026, BTC near $83,000); one move in ten topped $26, $55 and $123. By hour and weekday.

28 October 20266 min read

btc
data
volatility

Short answer: In the 30 days to 26 October 2026, with Bitcoin trading between $79,237 and $87,220, the median absolute move was $5.07 over 15 seconds, $15.37 over 1 minute and $36.55 over 5 minutes (0.006%, 0.019% and 0.044%). One move in ten was larger than $26, $55 and $123. Moves were biggest from 13:00 to 16:00 UTC (the US morning) and smallest in the US evening and on weekends.

If you trade short-horizon contracts, this is the number that sets everything else: how far a strike $20 away really is, how big a lead has to be before it's safe, how much a spread costs. Here it is measured from every second of a month.

The numbers

Every second from 27 Sep to 26 Oct 2026 is a start point (about 2.59 million per horizon). The move is the price h seconds later minus the price at the start, using Binance's BTCUSDT 1-second klines (the last trade at or before each second).

Horizon (s)	Median move ($)	75th percentile ($)	90th percentile ($)	99th percentile ($)	Largest ($)	Median move (%)	90th percentile (%)
15	5.07	14.01	26.01	63.92	716.58	0.0061	0.0315
60	15.37	31.76	54.58	129.27	1,116.92	0.0185	0.0658
300	36.55	73.08	123.47	293.27	1,438.13	0.0441	0.1487

Two other ways to read the same distribution:

Horizon (s)	Moves under $10 (%)	Moves under $25 (%)	Moves under $50 (%)	Moves of $100 or more (%)	Price unchanged (%)
15	65.3	89.1	97.9	0.2	17.13
60	37.5	66.9	88.0	2.2	5.18
300	16.8	37.3	61.2	15.1	0.52

Annualised, the month's realised volatility was 32.8% (from 5-minute returns). Annualised figures hide what matters at these horizons, though: most 15-second intervals barely move, and a few move a lot.

Bitcoin doesn't scale by the square root of time at 15 seconds

A random walk's typical move grows with the square root of time, so a 1-minute move should be about 2 times a 15-second one, and a 5-minute move about 4.5 times. Bitcoin's medians were 3.0 and 7.2 times.

The reason is the 15-second end. On Binance, the last trade price was exactly unchanged after 15 seconds 17% of the time: in quiet stretches, trades keep printing at the same bid or ask. That piles up small and zero moves, so the 15-second median is low compared with longer horizons. By 5 minutes it's gone (0.5% unchanged). Practical upshot: at 15 seconds, a strike one or two dollars from spot is a real distance; at 5 minutes it's noise.

When Bitcoin moves most: hour of day

The busiest hours were 13:00 to 16:00 UTC, which is 9 a.m. to noon in New York during daylight time, when US data comes out and US stock markets open. The median 1-minute move peaked at $29.85 at 14:00 UTC, about three times the quietest hour, 21:00 UTC ($10.20), an hour after the US stock market close.

Hour (UTC)	Median 15 s move ($)	Median 1 min move ($)	Median 5 min move ($)
00	5.62	16.12	38.00
01	6.38	17.99	43.18
02	5.99	16.23	38.83
03	3.99	13.99	35.99
04	2.27	11.98	30.00
05	3.34	13.05	31.99
06	3.85	13.43	31.23
07	4.63	14.26	34.44
08	5.81	16.16	36.36
09	4.79	15.23	34.06
10	3.74	13.93	32.77
11	4.00	14.07	32.20
12	6.02	16.97	40.35
13	10.00	23.34	54.39
14	13.99	29.85	70.73
15	10.82	24.89	53.70
16	8.80	20.11	48.34
17	6.47	17.72	40.72
18	4.43	14.18	34.69
19	3.92	13.44	32.52
20	1.48	10.93	26.38
21	0.58	10.20	29.68
22	3.31	12.12	29.46
23	2.48	12.23	32.60

Weekdays against weekends

Horizon (s)	Weekday median move ($)	Weekend median move ($)
15	7.64	0.01
60	19.65	7.80
300	45.98	21.95

Weekend moves were 40% to 48% of weekday moves at 1 and 5 minutes. At 15 seconds the weekend median was one cent: at least half of weekend 15-second intervals ended within a cent of where they started.

The biggest 1-minute moves of the month

Start (UTC)	Move ($)	Move (%)
2026-10-14 12:29:44	−1,116.92	−1.332
2026-10-07 02:00:19	−901.38	−1.066
2026-10-15 02:27:53	−585.44	−0.724
2026-10-02 04:19:50	+564.79	+0.659
2026-10-15 14:09:20	+551.08	+0.681

The largest straddled 12:30 UTC on 14 October, the moment the US Consumer Price Index for September came out (8:30 a.m. in New York). Scheduled releases like that one produce some of Bitcoin's biggest seconds: see how big the first minute after CPI and FOMC is.

What to do with these numbers

Size a strike against the horizon. A strike $25 from spot was further than 89% of 15-second moves, 67% of 1-minute moves and 37% of 5-minute moves.
Expect the clock to matter. The same contract is a different instrument at 14:00 UTC and at 21:00 UTC: about three times the typical 1-minute range.
Read the tails, not just the middle. At every horizon the 99th percentile was 8 to 13 times the median, and the largest move 39 to 141 times it.

On Rizon, the sigma field of GET /api/v1/markets gives each market's realised one-sigma move over its horizon, from recent ticks, so a bot or a person can check how far a strike is in today's terms rather than last month's.

How we measured it

Binance BTCUSDT 1-second klines from the public data archive, 27 Sep to 26 Oct 2026, no missing seconds. Each archive file is checked against its published SHA-256 checksum.
Prices are the last trade at or before each second; moves overlap (one per starting second).
BTCUSDT is quoted in tether, and Binance's last trade is one feed among several. Other venues' prices differ by small amounts second to second.
Rerun with bun studio/research/btc-moves.ts in Rizon's repository; FROM and TO pick other days.

FAQ

How much does Bitcoin move in one minute?

From 27 Sep to 26 Oct 2026, the median absolute 1-minute move was $15.37 (0.019%), and one minute in ten moved more than $54.58. Moves of $100 or more happened in 2.2% of minutes.