Thank you both very much. Since my original post, I discovered the exchange has a somewhat newer api and suggests a query no often than once every 2 secs. Also I just wanted a last price that I could feed to other modules. So, the code below is what I finally settled on for anybody interested.
Style[Dynamic[{DateString[],
ToExpression[
StringCases[Import["https://btc-e.com/api/3/ticker/btc_usd"],
"last\":" ~~ x__ ~~ ",\"buy" -> x][[1]]]}, UpdateInterval -> 2,
TrackedSymbols :> {}], DynamicEvaluationTimeout -> 10]