Live trades · buy/sell pressure · multi-exchange
Crypto order flow: reading executed trades
Read who crossed the spread, how much traded and whether executed flow was one-sided. The tape records trades, not orders waiting in an order book.
Live TradingHub tool
Open live order flow
The terminal turns incoming trade flow into a live tape, buy/sell context, Market Pulse and an Order Flow Score.
- Streams executed trades from the selected exchanges.
- Highlights larger notional trades and directional buy/sell flow.
- Combines rolling trade imbalance with liquidation context in the Order Flow Score.
- Keeps source and connection health visible so stale data is not presented as live.
Aggressive buying and selling
An aggressive buy is an execution initiated by a buyer taking available sell liquidity; an aggressive sell takes available buy liquidity. Every trade still has a buyer and a seller. “Buy flow” labels the initiating side, not the number of people who bought, a new long position or a trader’s identity.
Resting limit bids and asks have not yet executed. A visible buy wall can be cancelled; an executed buy cannot be undone by cancelling that order. The tape therefore answers a different question from an order-book depth view.
Use the existing terminal
Open the Crypto terminal’s live tape, choose BTC, ETH or SOL and inspect connection/source health. Read price, size, side and venue on individual prints. Display filters help you inspect selected trades; do not treat the visible filtered list as all market volume.
Market Pulse compares buy and sell notional in rolling 1-minute, 5-minute and 15-minute windows. A newly opened or interrupted session may not have observed a complete window. The Whale Tracker separately collects trades at or above $100,000 notional and offers size filters; a large print is not proof of an identifiable “whale” opening a position. Public streams may aggregate fills.
The Order Flow Score uses five-minute buy/sell pressure, observed liquidations and volume confidence. It is a smoothed heuristic from −100 to +100, not the raw imbalance percentage or a standard exchange indicator. Trade frequency is a diagnostic, not a score weight.
A five-minute example
Hypothetical complete five-minute sample: aggressive buys total $700,000 and aggressive sells $300,000. Total executed notional is $1 million. Market Pulse’s split is 70% buy / 30% sell. Net buy-minus-sell flow is $400,000; normalized imbalance is ($700,000 − $300,000) ÷ $1,000,000 × 100 = +40%. That calculation does not imply an Order Flow Score of +40.
A $150,000 buy at $60,000 corresponds to 2.5 BTC in a linear BTC market and passes the Whale Tracker floor. It is part of the buy total, not an extra amount to add again. If price barely moves despite buy pressure, sellers may be absorbing it; that is a hypothesis, not proof of a reversal.
Limits of the reading
Compare the same market, venues and observed duration. Check whether forced closes accompanied the flow and whether open exposure changed. Aggressive buying can close shorts as well as open longs. For resting bids, asks and spread mechanics, read the order-book guide. Missing feeds and different aggregation rules limit cross-venue trade counts.
Related TradingHub tools
Delta, cumulative delta and normalized imbalance
Executed delta is aggressive buy notional minus aggressive sell notional for a defined sample. Cumulative volume delta adds such differences over a specified history and reset point; it is not the normalized percentage shown in the short-sample comparator. With buys $700,000 and sells $300,000, delta is $400,000, buy share 70% and normalized imbalance +40%. State quantity units and sampling coverage before comparing venues.
A buy-heavy sample with little price movement is consistent with possible selling absorption, but does not prove intent, hidden orders or a future reversal. This interface does not claim to provide a complete historical CVD series. A reconnect can omit executions and change cumulative interpretations. The dedicated derivatives-reading guide works through these limitations without inventing unavailable history.
Risk: derivatives and leveraged crypto trading can result in rapid losses. TradingHub provides market data and calculation tools, not financial advice or trade signals.
Derivatives data may be delayed, incomplete or venue-specific. Liquidation, funding and open-interest tools are analytical context, not trading signals. Risk Disclaimer