Most market data arrives as two numbers: the highest bid and the lowest ask. The usual way to turn that into one price is to take the middle. It works so reliably during market hours that it is easy to forget it is an assumption.
The case
On Sunday 4 October 2026 the quote for the AMC stock token read 2.72 bid, 11.80 ask. The midpoint is 7.26. AMC had closed on Friday near 2.80, inside a session range of 2.71 to 2.89. So the midpoint was off by a factor of 2.6, and anything multiplied by it was off by the same factor: the token’s on-chain value showed as $5.7 million when it was about $2.1 million.
It also poisoned a comparison. The token’s on-chain pool priced it at 2.77, which was right. Set against a 7.26 midpoint, the pool looked 62% cheap. There was no discount. There was a bad reference price.
It was not one token
Across the whole list that Sunday the median spread was 4%, and about a third of the tokens had spreads over 10%. Some were extreme: one quoted 0.11 against 24. With the stock market shut, the quote stays up but stops being competitive, and one side drifts far from anything a trade would happen at.
What to use instead
The fix is an order of trust. First the live midpoint, when the spread is 2% or less. Then the last midpoint recorded while the spread was that tight, which on a weekend is Friday’s close. Then, if only one side of the quote sits inside the last session’s range, that side: for AMC, the 2.72 bid. Then the middle of the last session’s range. Then nothing, with the row marked as unpriced.
Whichever is used travels with the number. On the NoVo Crypto Market Map a token price that is not the live midpoint is marked with an approximately sign, and the cell says where it came from.
The general lesson
Before trusting any midpoint, look at the spread. A wide quote is the market telling you it does not know, and averaging two guesses does not produce knowledge. It applies well beyond stock tokens: to an option deep out of the money, to a thin pool, to any instrument after hours.
The same care belongs on the comparison side. A gap between two prices is only a gap if both prices are real. When one of them is a midpoint off a wide quote, the gap is measuring the quote.