Skip to content

Issue #409 — point-in-time BTC/USD corpus procurement comparison

Public documentation reviewed: 2026-09-27. No provider was contacted; no quote, sample, dataset, license, or approval was obtained.

Outcome: blocked

The machine-readable comparison is ISSUE_409_PIT_CORPUS_COMPARISON.json. Five archive/data channels are compared against the unchanged canonical contract. Public product descriptions establish plausible historical data channels, not the complete set of exact-pair, complete-coverage, publication vintage, revision-0, and licensed-retention requirements. Therefore no source is admitted, no procurement is approved, and no data was acquired. The existing canonical absence audit remains 0/32,136 target hours and 0/4,320 warm-up hours; it is not an audit of vendor data.

Contract and decision rule

The required archive is one named spot venue, exact BTC/USD or XBT/USD, hourly UTC OHLCV for target [2023-01-01T00:00:00Z, 2026-09-01T00:00:00Z) and its contiguous 180-day warm-up [2022-07-05T00:00:00Z, 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z). Each observation must provide the exact candle-close timestamp, the exact candle's first-publication time no later than its close, and original revision-0 values plus revision history. Research storage/use and retention must be explicitly licensed. The unchanged canonical audit requires all 32,136 target and 4,320 warm-up hours; no dataset was available to run through it.

Comparison findings

Channel Publicly documented capability Eligibility blocker / unknown
Kaiko Spot trade aggregations including OHLCV, exchange/instrument references, versioning documentation, and API/cloud channels. Exact eligible instrument and interval not entitlement-verified; documentation does not establish per-candle first-publication plus recoverable original revision-0 history; license, retention, quote, and sample not obtained.
Coin Metrics Market Data Feed Market-specific OHLCV including 1h, UTC timestamps, catalog/coverage discovery, historical HTTP access. Its candle documentation explicitly describes recalculation of recent values and replacement by finalized candles. Exact venue coverage and full interval not verified. No evidence that per-candle initial publication and original revision-0 candle values/history can be obtained. License, retention, quote, and sample not obtained.
CoinAPI Flat Files / Market Data API Product documentation describes bulk historical files and historical/realtime market data. Public product overview does not establish exact pair, coverage, first-publication/revision-0 fields, license/retention, or cost. No sample or quote obtained.
Amberdata spot OHLCV Historical/batch OHLCV, hourly granularity, and venue/dataset coverage table are documented. Public coverage lists Kraken and Bitstamp spot OHLCV history before the target start. Coverage dates do not prove pair-level exactness or every required hour; publication vintage/revision-0 history is not established. License, retention, quote, and sample not obtained.
Direct Kraken public OHLC endpoint Repository's #397 source review records the documented 720-entry recent limit and inability to retrieve older records. Cannot cover target plus warm-up and does not establish first publication or revision history. No separate licensed archive identified.

These are documentation-level findings only. In particular, a data-versioning feature, long history start date, hourly API, or coverage table alone does not prove that the exact immutable revision-0 records required by this gate can be licensed and delivered.

Procurement decision and reproducible next action

No provider contact, purchase, budget approval, or license approval is claimed. The responsible role is the project owner/budget authority; this audit does not name or assign an individual. Before any provider outreach, that role must record written authorization for a procurement evaluation and acceptable spend/contract boundaries. This authorizes inquiry only. Purchase, account creation, paid access, and acquisition each remain subject to explicit approval under the resulting terms.

First inquiry after authorization: Kaiko

Kaiko's official contact page invites requirements for a custom price quote. Its Contact form is the documented first inquiry channel. The proposed first instrument is Kraken XBT/USD only, using the CeFi spot count/OHLCV API as product context; this is an inquiry target, not a finding that Kaiko covers or can provide an eligible corpus.

After the authorization gate, send the following specification and request written answers, an authorized sample/schema, and the applicable license terms:

We are evaluating a research-only BTC/USD historical corpus. Please confirm whether you can supply one named spot venue only: Kraken XBT/USD (do not combine with another venue), hourly UTC OHLCV for target [2023-01-01T00:00:00Z, 2026-09-01T00:00:00Z) and contiguous warm-up [2022-07-05T00:00:00Z, 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z), totaling 32,136 target hours and 4,320 warm-up hours. For the exact original candle records, can you provide candle interval/close timestamp, the timestamp each record was first published/available (and confirm it is no later than the close), immutable original revision-0 values, and revision/change history sufficient to distinguish revision 0 from later corrections? Please state completeness/gap reporting and exact venue/instrument identifiers. Please provide the applicable research storage/use and retention license terms, restrictions on retained source files, acquisition/delivery method, quote and contract dependencies, and an authorized sample/schema demonstrating these fields. If any requested field, coverage, venue/pair, vintage, license, or retention right is unavailable, please identify it explicitly as unavailable; do not substitute another venue or quote asset.

The machine-readable artifact retains a copy of the inquiry text and question list. Its tracking fields remain submission_status: not_sent and response_status: not_requested until an authorized submission occurs. If a future authorized inquiry receives no response, record no_response, the submission and follow-up/check dates, and preserve the unanswered state; silence is not a provider refusal or approval. Record any reply as a dated, sanitized summary/link without credentials or licensed samples. Treat each unconfirmed item as unknown; do not infer it. If Kraken XBT/USD is unavailable, do not substitute a second venue within this corpus; any alternative venue requires a separate explicit single-venue review.

Only after separate authorized access, preserve original files and terms outside Git with acquisition metadata and SHA-256 manifest, then run the canonical audit described in ISSUE_397_PIT_BTCUSD_CORPUS.md.

Do not use BTCUSDT, combine venues, treat revised latest history as a vintage, infer missing vintage data, admit partial coverage, or relax any gate. Until a fully licensed source passes the unchanged audit, the corpus remains blocked.

Public documentation references