when will UTC hit a exchange platform？
Today!
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Is there a direct correlation between a pool difficulty and the coin difficulty? I know it sounds like a basic question, just never considered it before.
No. Coin difficulty is based on the total network hash: the rate blocks have been solved vs. targeted block time over a pre-defined period of blocks.
Pool difficulty is set by operator and is just for shares sent to miners in the pool. If a pool runs vardiff; then the difficulty of shares will vary to each miner based on their share submit rate.