I highly doubt CEXs do those unnecessary conversions, when the order book already has the data they need to execute teades. Simply a bunch of offers and a bunch of takers, with different sizes and different price points, neither side having any interest in USD here, constantly matching their order lots between eg BTC & XMR or whatever.. Even shitty engineers would need to put in legitimate effort to be that wastefu & it presents a big risk of slippage if the conversions aren't 100% realtime. (It's certainly not impossible)
no you're right, they don't. I was oversimplifing. You're being specific and I appreciate that. but however you slice it, the order book is following the USD price of the asset 99.9999% of the time. so while I acknowledge there's nuance, the charts are de facto USD denominated.