The best day to buy crypto? What a year of data shows from Mexico

"Buy on Monday." "Sunday night is cheapest." "Wait for the dip after the weekend." Advice like this is everywhere, and most of it comes from people who never ran the numbers. So we did. We pulled a year of daily bitcoin prices in Mexican pesos and three months of hourly prices from CoinGecko, then measured the average move for each weekday and each hour, on Mexico City time.

The short version: the differences exist, but they're small, they don't hold still and they disappear in the noise. Below is the same calculation running live, then the things that actually change what you pay, with an angle for people who live in Mexico but earn, bank or think in dollars.

Is there a best day to buy bitcoin?

When we ran the check, the weekday with the highest average and the one with the lowest were less than one percentage point apart. That sounds meaningful until you set it against volatilityHow much the price swings. High volatility means large moves up and down in a short time.: on an ordinary day, bitcoin moved about 1% up or down, and on busy days far more. With roughly 52 observations per weekday, a gap that size is exactly what chance produces.

The cleanest test was splitting the year in half. The weekday that came out worst in the first half was the best in the second. A genuinely cheap day would repeat. This one swapped places within months.

One thing did hold up, just not the thing people look for: Saturdays and Sundays were noticeably calmer than weekdays. That makes weekends quieter, not cheaper. With US stock and bond markets closed, a big share of institutional flow simply stops.

A note for reading the chart: CoinGecko closes its daily candles on UTC, so each "day" in the widget runs from roughly 6 p.m. to 6 p.m. Mexico City time. The numbers are computed in your browser each time the page loads, so today's ranking may not match what we describe. That's the point. If the "best day" depends on which week you check, it isn't a strategy.

The clock that matters is New York's

The hourly data tells the same story at a smaller scale. The average change for every hour sat very close to zero, and the spread between the most and least positive hour was smaller than a typical single-hour move. That's nothing you can capture once fees are in.

Volatility per hour, which we calculated separately because the widget shows averages, was more revealing. The largest moves clustered in the Mexico City morning, roughly 7 to 10 a.m., which lines up with the US stock market open and the 8:30 a.m. Eastern release of US economic data. A smaller bump showed up around 2 to 3 a.m., when Europe opens. Mexican nights and weekends were the quietest stretch.

Here's the wrinkle expats miss. Central Mexico dropped daylight saving time in 2022, but the US didn't. So the NYSE opening bell at 9:30 a.m. Eastern rings at 7:30 a.m. in Mexico City from March to early November and 8:30 a.m. the rest of the year. Cancún and the Riviera Maya stay on UTC−5 all year, so add an hour to everything in the hourly chart. Tijuana and most of Baja California follow US Pacific time, where the open is always 6:30 a.m.

None of this gives you a cheaper price. It tells you when a market order is more likely to fill while the price is jumping. If you'd rather buy in calm water, evenings and weekends work.

Peso price or dollar price?

The widget measures bitcoin in pesos, and the peso price combines two moves: bitcoin against the dollar and the dollar against the peso. If you earn in dollars and convert to buy on a Mexican exchange, a stronger peso can make bitcoin look cheaper in your app even when it hasn't moved in dollars. If your reference currency is the dollar, judge your entry in dollars, and treat the currency conversion as a separate cost. Our fee guide breaks down FX charges on US cards and accounts.

Liquidity and spreads at night

Here's where timing has a practical edge. LiquidityHow easily you can buy or sell without moving the price. A liquid market has many orders waiting near the current price. on peso order books is far thinner than on the big dollar pairs of global exchanges, and it thins further in the small hours. You see the cost in the spreadThe gap between the best price someone will sell at and the best price someone will pay. It's a cost even when no fee is shown. and in the depth of the order bookThe public list of buy and sell orders, each with a price and size, waiting to be filled..

We took a snapshot of Bitso's public API at 3:30 a.m. on a Monday. BTC/MXN, ETH/MXN and the digital dollar book had spreads of a few hundredths of a percent or less, and BTC/MXN had more than a million pesos of sell orders within 0.5% of the price. For a purchase of USD 100 or USD 1,000, the hour made no difference. Thin books like Litecoin or Decentraland against pesos showed spreads of around half a percent at the same moment. One snapshot isn't a statistic, but the lesson is clear: which coin you buy matters more than when.

A limit orderAn order where you set the maximum price you'll pay. It only fills if someone sells at that price or lower. protects you at any hour: on Bitso's advanced view, Kraken or Binance spot, you set the price and never overpay into a thin book.

Weekend funding: SPEI vs ACH

If you have a Mexican bank account, SPEI runs 24 hours a day, every day, and a Sunday-midnight deposit to your exchange usually lands in minutes. Our SPEI guide covers which platforms accept it and what you need, including a CURP.

Dollar rails don't work that way. ACH transfers and wires from a US bank settle on US business days only, so money sent on Friday evening typically arrives Monday, and US federal holidays add another day. Card purchases go through any time, but your issuer may add a foreign transaction fee or treat the charge as a cash advance; see the guide to buying crypto with a card in Mexico.

Cashing out has its own calendar. Binance says peso withdrawals through its Mexican payment company, Medá, take 1 to 3 business days, as we explain in the guide to withdrawing from Binance to a Mexican bank. Buying on a weekend is fine. Planning to have pesos back in your bank on a specific Monday is not.

Payday: a hypothesis we couldn't confirm

Many Mexican employers pay on the 15th and on the last day of the month, the famous quincena, and US paychecks often land every other Friday. It's tempting to think these days move prices. We checked the days around each quincena in the year of data. The average differed from other days, but with only about four dozen observations and daily swings of several percent, the gap was indistinguishable from chance. Peso exchange volume is a drop in a market priced mostly in dollars elsewhere.

Treat payday as a good day to buy because the money is in your account, not because the price will be lower.

Dollar-cost averaging or a lump sum

DCADollar-cost averaging: buying the same amount at regular intervals regardless of price. means investing the same amount every week, two weeks or month. When the price falls, your money buys more bitcoin; when it rises, it buys less, and your average cost lands somewhere in between.

The honest comparison is against putting everything in on day one. Vanguard, which studied the question for stocks and bonds over decades, concludes that if you already have the money, investing it right away tends to come out ahead over the long run, and it notes that holding back is itself a form of market timing. Crypto is more violent and has a shorter history. In the year we analyzed, the peso price fell close to half from its peak at one point, and in most six-month windows buying monthly beat going all in at the start. In a year of steady gains it would have been the other way around.

Slide the month control and you'll see the winner change with the window. DCA isn't a way to earn more; it's a way to not have to be right. For a remote worker paid monthly in dollars, it also matches how money actually arrives.

Why market timing keeps failing

The problem with waiting for the perfect moment isn't only that nobody knows it. The best days arrive without warning and tend to sit right next to the worst. In the year we reviewed, removing just the five biggest up days nearly doubled the period's total loss. Anyone who stepped aside "to be safe" after a drop had good odds of missing the rebound.

There's a quieter cost too. Every exit and re-entry pays fees and spread, and a profitable sale is a taxable event. In Mexico, residents report gains to the SAT, and US citizens also owe tax on worldwide income to the IRS; our crypto tax guide covers both. Timing the market means being right twice, getting out and getting back in, and most people miss at least once.

None of this means bitcoin will go up. It can spend years below what you paid. So "is now a good time to buy?" has a personal answer, not a market one: it's a good time if you won't need the money soon, if you could watch your balance halve without selling, and if you understand what you own. Our bitcoin guide is a good place to start.

Emotional mistakes that cost more than a bad day

Buying on FOMOFear of missing out: the urge to buy something just because everyone is talking about how much it's rising.. When bitcoin is in the headlines for a new high, the urge is to go all in. That's when the most new buyers arrive, and the most regret it later. If you feel urgency, buy only your usual amount.

Panic selling. A 20% drop in a week feels like the end, and in crypto it happens often. If your plan spans years, one week shouldn't change it. If you can't stomach that kind of move, your position is too big for you.

Checking the price all day. Opening the app ten times a day doesn't improve your entry. It just exposes you to impulsive decisions. Scheduled buys exist to take that noise away.

Chasing the bounce with borrowed money. Using a credit card or a loan to "buy the dip" turns a bad month into debt with interest. Don't.

What you do control

You don't control tomorrow's price, but you control almost everything else. Pick a platform whose funding fits your money: free SPEI and peso order books if you bank in Mexico, as in our Bitso review, or a dollar balance if you earn in USD, as in our Kraken review. Buy on a fixed schedule so your mood doesn't decide. Batch small buys before withdrawing to your own wallet so you pay one network fee, not five. Keep every receipt from the first purchase on, and if you're brand new, the beginner's guide walks through the first steps.

If you already hold crypto and wonder whether to put it to work while you wait, read our guide to crypto staking in Mexico first. There, the risk isn't the day you buy; it's who holds your coins.