Dollar bars - Meridian

A dollar bar accumulates each aggTrade’s notional value:

dollar_value = price × quantity
cumulative_dollar_value += dollar_value

The bar closes when:

cumulative_dollar_value >= threshold

Behavior at the threshold

The aggTrade that crosses the threshold remains wholly inside the closing bar. Meridian does not split a single aggTrade between two bars. The next bar starts with the following record. This means a bar’s final dollar_volume can exceed its configured threshold.

Useful properties

Active periods naturally produce more bars.
Every completed bar represents approximately comparable traded notional.
Cross-period sampling is less dominated by quiet clock intervals.
trade_count and elapsed bar duration remain variable.

Query example

{
  "exchange": "binance-futures",
  "product": "BTCUSDT",
  "bar_type": "dollar",
  "begin": "2026-01-01T00:00:00Z",
  "end": "2026-01-02T00:00:00Z",
  "threshold": 5000000,
  "limit": 1000
}

Use the catalog first rather than assuming that a particular threshold has already been materialized.