6 / 6 · 10 min
Nine venues in one row: where the numbers come from and where the merge deceives
Every row in the table is assembled from several exchanges, and that is not cosmetic: how it is assembled decides the turnover, the asset kind, and where you should actually execute.
A row is a group of markets, not an exchange
Thinking of an instrument as one row on one exchange is the most expensive of the harmless habits. We carry 1217 instruments from nine venues, and a typical one lives on four at once: the median across the table is 4 and the maximum is 7. Bitcoin trades on all seven venues that have perpetuals. Everything you see in a row is the result of a merge, and it pays to know what came from where.
What comes from where
| Number | Source | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Price | the primary venue by turnover | more trades means a fairer price |
| Turnover | the SUM across the whole group | otherwise half the market disappears |
| Funding | its own value on each venue | they diverge, and that is a signal of its own |
| Book walls | the exchange where the wall actually stands | that is where the order has to go |
The bug that halved turnover
Our own defect, found on 08.08.2026. A row's turnover was computed from the name of the primary venue rather than across the group. For crude oil the primary turned out to be MEXC — and $822 million from Binance never made it into the sum. The table showed $111 million instead of $901 million: an eightfold understatement on an instrument visible on the first screen. The same bug had been there for every pair like AAPL and AAPLSTOCK, but there was nothing to compare against, so it lay quiet. The general moral: a wrong link between two correct numbers is invisible to any check of values.
One thing under several names
Exchanges never agreed on names, and this shows most outside crypto. WTI crude is `CL` on one venue, `USOIL` on another and `WTI` on a third; gold is `XAU` and `GOLD`; the euro is `EUR` and `EURUSD`. Without name merging, oil stood in the table three times and gold twice: in the commodities bucket, 10 of 27 rows were duplicates. Merging runs off a synonym table of 13 names, but the price-divergence check was kept as insurance — if an exchange renames a contract, rows will not silently fuse.
And the reverse case: one name, different things
This one is more dangerous because it looks harmless. `QNT` is the Quant cryptocurrency at $59.34; `QNTSTOCK` on MEXC is a tokenised share at $58.50. The gap is 1.42%, and a 3% price threshold let it through: the rows fused and Quant disappeared from crypto along with its turnover. The signal that answers directly turned out to be a different one: if ONE exchange lists both names, then by its own account these are two different contracts — nobody lists the same thing twice. Of 261 `*STOCK` contracts on MEXC, exactly seven have the bare name sitting next to them, and those are precisely the ones that must not be merged.
Assuming a ticker with a number is the same coin
`1000PEPE` is not PEPE but a contract on a thousand coins, and its price is a thousand times higher. As long as you are looking at price this is obvious; it stops being obvious in derived conclusions. `CAT` is Caterpillar while `1000CAT` is a meme token about a cat: both entries are correct on their own, and what is wrong is the link between them. That is why any automatic derivation of one name from another checks the asset KIND on our side and stays silent when it does not match. In practice: seeing an unfamiliar ticker with a multiplier, look up the bare name separately instead of completing it in your head.
On half the exchanges, book size is not in coins
The same kind of trap in a different place. On Binance and Bybit the size in the order book is stated in coins, while on MEXC, Gate and OKX it is in CONTRACTS, and one contract may equal 0.0001 of a coin. Without the multiplier, a bitcoin wall on MEXC displayed as twenty billion dollars — an error by a factor of ten thousand. We load contract sizes before subscribing to the book, but it is worth remembering on your side too: comparing sizes across the terminals of different exchanges directly means comparing different units.
How many venues your instrument has is a number too
340 of the 1217 instruments (27.9%) trade on exactly ONE venue. That is not a detail but a property of the instrument: it has no second opinion on price, its entire turnover rests on one exchange, and if that exchange halts trading or goes down there is nowhere to exit and no price to exit at. At the other end, 231 instruments (19%) trade on seven venues at once — the price is confirmed independently and one exchange failing does not stop you. The exchange badges sit in the row for that reason, not for decoration.
Divergence between venues is data in itself
Numbers are never identical across exchanges, and the difference is meaningful. A live funding measurement: COTI shows −0.119% on Binance and −1.071% on Bybit — nearly a full percentage point apart on a single settlement. The market median spread meanwhile is exactly zero: on most coins the venues agree, which is why the rare disagreements stand out. The same goes for price: a divergence usually means somebody large is working on one venue and arbitrage has not caught up yet. Worth watching is not only the number but whether the venues agree on it.
Taking a number from our table and executing anywhere
A number without a venue is not yet an action. A wall stands on a specific exchange and does not exist on another. You will pay the funding of your venue, not the average one. The turnover in the row is a sum, while you will execute in one book and your order meets only that book's depth. That is why the exchange is always shown next to a wall and funding is comparable across venues: not for completeness, but so the number can be turned into an action.
Why a trader should care
Merging nine venues gives three things a single exchange terminal cannot. First, the full turnover — and therefore a correct sense of whether a wall is large and whether a surge is notable. Second, instruments that simply do not exist on the major venues: 212 coins trade only on MEXC, and without it they would not be in the table at all. Third, the divergence between exchanges as a signal of its own: where funding is cheaper, where the wall stands, where price has already moved. One exchange can show none of the three, however good its terminal is.
Every screener row carries badges of the venues where the instrument trades. Filter the table down to your own coins and look at those badges: how many of them live on a single exchange? For those it is worth deciding in advance what you will do if it halts trading — that question is better settled before the halt, not during it.
How the screener worksCheck your instruments for one-sidedness
Write down the instruments you held over the past month and note the number of venues and the daily turnover for each. Then split the list in two: those trading on one or two exchanges, and those on five or more. For the first pile answer three questions: how long an exit in your size would take, whether you already have an account on that exchange, and what you would do if trading were halted for a day. If you have no answers, that does not mean such instruments cannot be traded — it means your position size in them has to be different.
The table shows $50 million of turnover for a coin while your exchange terminal shows $8 million. Who is wrong?
Nobody. The table sums every venue where the coin trades; the terminal shows one exchange. For judging whether a move matters, the sum is useful; for judging how YOUR order will fill, only your venue is. These are two different quantities for two different questions, and confusing them is expensive: a $2 million wall looks modest against a combined $50 million and enormous against the $8 million actually present in your book.
Why can rows with the same ticker not simply be merged?
Because matching names is not the same as matching things. For us `QNT` is crypto and `QNTSTOCK` is a tokenised share, and their prices differed by just 1.42%, so a price check could not tell them apart. The signal that does tell them apart reliably is substantive rather than numeric: if one and the same exchange lists both names, then for that exchange these are two different contracts. The general technique is the same as with coin descriptions: if the basis for merging is formal rather than substantive, one day it will merge the wrong pair, and no check of individual values will notice.