24-Hour Total Return

The figure compares the current composite price with the composite price twenty-four hours earlier and expresses the difference as a percentage. It is labeled a total return by convention, but for almost all digital assets it is a pure price return, since there is no dividend and staking rewards are not included. For a staked position the actual return differs from this figure by the rewards accrued over the window.

How it is computed

(price now / price 24 hours ago - 1) x 100

Where it misleads

A rolling window with no market close means the number changes meaning with the second it is read and can never be reconciled with any daily bar or exchange report. It is computed on a cross-venue composite, so a venue outage or a deviation in the stablecoin quote pair moves it without any change in the asset itself. Over one day, spread, fee, and gas costs are a meaningful fraction of the number for smaller assets, so the reported change is not the change a position would have realized. Staking issuance, airdrops, and fee rebates are excluded.

The equity comparison, and why it fails

One-day total return on an equity; the equity version includes distributions and is measured between two official closes, while this excludes staking rewards and has no official close on either end.

Reading a high or a low value

A positive figure means the price is higher than it was a day earlier and a negative figure means it is lower. Single-day changes in this asset class are frequently larger than a full year of change in many other markets, so a large value is not by itself unusual.