Why is Bitcoin's closing price different from the opening price of the next day?

Question

Why is Bitcoin's closing price different from the opening price of the next day? For example, below is bitcoin prices of the last month. Close price on day 08/21/2022 was 21380.6, but open price on 08/22/2022 was 21419.0.

Unlike stock markets, Bitcoin trading is 24 hour running. For stock markets, there is a time gap between opening and closing. For Bitcoin markets. the gap should be 0. For bitcoin charts (from Binance for example), I assume opening price should refer to the end of the day, 23h59m59s, and open price should refer to 0h00m00s, how could there be such a big price fluctuation within 1 second?

          Date  Close/Last     Open     High      Low
0   08/22/2022     21285.7  21419.0  21458.2  21271.2
1   08/21/2022     21380.6  21250.8  21489.9  21077.4
2   08/20/2022     21186.6  21146.8  21322.4  21126.1
3   08/19/2022     21135.4  22814.0  21170.7  20813.5
4   08/18/2022     22783.2  23457.8  23202.3  22718.2
5   08/17/2022     23447.6  23988.2  23512.3  23297.7
6   08/16/2022     24018.2  24045.7  24077.0  23834.6
7   08/15/2022     24101.5  24920.6  24240.8  23858.9
8   08/14/2022     24832.1  24602.8  25205.7  24193.8
9   08/13/2022     24589.3  24666.5  24623.4  24352.9
10  08/12/2022     24744.9  24008.3  24787.5  24337.5
11  08/11/2022     23997.1  24268.1  24090.0  23765.2
12  08/10/2022     24353.8  22913.8  24481.3  23923.3
13  08/09/2022     22876.6  23833.5  23150.5  22714.7
14  08/08/2022     23813.3  23305.4  23866.2  23636.4
15  08/07/2022     23307.0  22990.5  23339.8  23160.6
16  08/06/2022     22999.6  23266.8  23048.0  22852.3
17  08/05/2022     23202.8  23050.6  23344.4  23167.0
18  08/04/2022     23158.2  23073.1  23188.4  22593.5
19  08/03/2022     23069.8  22842.6  23214.5  22794.4
20  08/02/2022     22852.4  22853.6  23060.0  22698.6
21  08/01/2022     22876.7  23375.4  23412.7  22790.9
22  07/31/2022     23361.0  23741.9  23459.1  23265.9
23  07/30/2022     23706.7  23801.6  23864.6  23548.9
24  07/29/2022     23813.7  23918.9  23956.5  23698.0
25  07/28/2022     23924.0  23120.7  23938.7  23711.8
26  07/27/2022     23139.2  21074.1  23418.2  22714.1
27  07/26/2022     21068.7  21144.8  21279.8  21047.5
28  07/25/2022     21143.6  21863.6  21322.3  20916.6
29  07/24/2022     21802.8  22332.0  22653.3  21802.7
30  07/23/2022     22333.2  22838.2  22664.6  22311.0

Answer 1

This is normal for any kind of financial market

For example: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/139.asp

The listed closing price is the last price anyone paid for a share of that stock during the business hours of the exchange where the stock trades. The opening price is the price from the first transaction of a business day. Sometimes these prices are different.

Like any other stock, share, currency or commodity - Bitcoin doesn't have a single price. A currency has a different price in each exchange where it is exchanged. Just as a share or commodity has a separate price in each market in which it is traded. The market or exchange normally doesn't set the price - it just records what people paid.

A published closing price might be the average price of the trades in the last 30 minutes of a day (e.g. between 23:30:00.0000 to 23:59:59.9999). Or it might be the price of the last transaction of the day (e.g at 23:59:57.7634)

A published opening price might be the price set in the first trade of a day (e.g. at 00:00:00.0001).

Prices are not continuous, they are not set by the exchange. The price of each trade simply reflects what that specific individual buyer was willing to pay and what that specific individual seller was willing to accept.

If you want to know for certain exactly how a specific exchange calculates the data it publishes, you'd have to ask that specific exchange directly.