The CryptoDOM Bible
Everything you need to go from "what am I looking at?" to reading the order book like a pro. Every tool on the chart, what it means, how to set it up, and how traders actually use it.
Nothing in the guide matches that search. Try a shorter word, like "wall" or "liq".
Quick start – your first 5 minutes
CryptoDOM shows you the order book (everyone's waiting buy and sell orders) and the trades hitting it, merged from Binance, Bybit and OKX, live, on one chart. Here's how to get oriented fast.
- Open the app – /app. BTC is free, no account needed. The chart opens live, centred on price.
- Look at the bright horizontal lines. Those are big resting orders. Grey = normal size (brighter = more), yellow = the biggest orders on screen. Below price are buyers (bids), above price are sellers (asks).
- Watch price meet a yellow line. Does it bounce, stall, or eat through it? That interaction is the whole game.
- Scroll to zoom time, drag to move, Shift+scroll (or drag the price scale) to zoom price. Zoom in far enough and candles turn into a footprint showing buys and sells at every price.
- Pick a timeframe at the top (1s to 1M) and, next to it, a candle style. Scrolled away? A ▶ Live button appears on the chart (or double-click); Reset view (Alt+R) also puts the zoom back.
- Open ⚙ Chart to choose a colour template, and ƒx Indicators to add RSI, open interest, funding and 30+ more.
Leave the chart running for a few minutes on a quiet period, then watch one level. Learning to see how liquidity behaves around price is worth more than any indicator.
Screen tour
| # | Area | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Top bar | Symbol, timeframe (Auto, 1s … 1M), candle style, Indicators, Chart (all settings, sessions included), Replay, Follow price, help ?, your account. |
| 2 | Drawing toolbar | Trend lines, rays, rectangles, Fibonacci, anchored VWAP, long/short position, text and more. Eye = hide drawings, bin = delete all. |
| 3 | Main chart | The heatmap of resting orders, candles or footprint on top, trade bubbles and all event markers (icebergs, absorption, walls pulled, sweeps, liquidations, GEX…). Hover any marker for a card that says what it is in plain words. Bottom right: ▶ Live and Reset view appear when you have moved away. |
| 4 | Price scale | Drag or scroll on it to zoom price. Shows last price, best bid (B) and best ask (A). |
| 5 | Depth | The order book right now, per price: green = bids, red = asks, yellow = the biggest. Bars point at the chart. |
| 6 | Volume profile | How much traded at each price over what's on screen (buys green, sells red). The orange outline is the POC – the price with the most volume. |
| 7 | Tape | Big prints only (threshold shown on top), plus liquidations (LIQL/LIQS), icebergs (ICE) and absorption (ABS) as they happen. |
| 8 | CVD pane | Cumulative volume delta (blue), delta per column (bars) and book imbalance (yellow). Indicator panes stack here too. |
| 9 | Status bar | Feed health for each exchange, counts of events, how much history is loaded and your plan. |
Keep the legend open while learning (the list icon in the left toolbar, or Chart → Colours → Legend panel). It explains every colour and symbol that is switched on.
How price really moves (order flow in 3 minutes)
Every chart tool in CryptoDOM rests on four ideas. Get these and everything else clicks.
1 · Limit orders wait
A limit order says "buy 5 BTC at 74,900" and sits in the order book until someone trades with it. Waiting buy orders are bids (below price), waiting sell orders are asks or offers (above price). They are passive liquidity. The heatmap draws them.
2 · Market orders hit
A market order says "buy 5 BTC now, whatever the price". It trades against the best waiting asks. The trader who crosses the spread is the aggressor. Trade bubbles, the tape, delta and the footprint all measure aggression.
3 · Price moves when liquidity runs out
Price only goes up when aggressive buyers eat every ask at the current price, so the next trade happens one step higher (or when sellers pull their asks). A thick wall of asks needs a lot of buying to get through; an empty area lets price slide fast.
4 · Intent vs action
Resting orders show intent – they can be cancelled (and big ones often are). Trades are action – real money that changed hands. The best reads come from comparing the two: lots of aggression that fails to move price, or a wall that disappears just before price touches it.
The spread is the gap between the best bid and the best ask. On BTC it's usually one tick; when it widens (shown in orange if you enable the bid/ask lines), the book is thin and moves can be violent.
No single signal predicts price. Order flow shows you who is doing what right now. Use it for timing and context, always with a stop and a plan.
The heatmap
The heatmap is a recording of the order book. Every half-second CryptoDOM takes a snapshot of all resting orders on Binance, Bybit and OKX (perpetuals and spot), adds them up per price, and draws one thin vertical slice. Time runs left to right, price bottom to top. A bright horizontal line = an order that stayed in the book for that long.
Colours
The default CryptoDOM template uses the colours every trader already reads without thinking, sharpened up: green = up / buys / bids, red = down / sells / asks. The heatmap shows how much liquidity is resting: normal liquidity runs from deep navy to blue (brighter = more) and only the biggest walls light up yellow, so the levels that matter jump out at a glance. The POC is outlined in white (like the middle row of the logo), the session VWAP is an orange dashed line; white also marks the current price and the strongest signals. Prefer something else? Chart → Colours has an Asia template (red up / green down), a colour-blind safe blue / orange one, and the classic and alternative schemes.
- Grey – normal resting orders. Brighter = bigger.
- Yellow (white in some templates) – the biggest orders on screen (by default the top 0.5 % of all visible levels). Brighter = even bigger.
- Grey – liquidity at prices the market has already traded through since that moment. It is spent history, no longer a level to trade against. Anything still blue or yellow is untested: price has not been back there yet. Untested yellow walls are drawn in front of the candles because they are still waiting. Switch it off in Chart → Heatmap → "Grey out levels price already went through".
- Grey liquidation marks – the same idea for liquidations: once price has traded back through a liquidation level, that cluster is spent and its mark turns grey (no label). Orange / purple marks are the levels still waiting. Chart → Signals → "Grey out liquidations price went back through".
- Bid / ask tint – grey below the price is tinted slightly green (bids), above slightly red (asks). When price crosses a level, the tint flips: the buyers there were eaten and the price is now offered by sellers.
- Band on the right – the current book continued into the empty space ahead of price; walls still active right now are drawn there at full strength.
- How a line ends – ⊠ = taken by trades, red square = pulled (cancelled), still running into the right edge = still active. See Chapter 8.
- Style Full colour (Chart → Heatmap) switches to a classic blue → yellow → white heatmap instead of grey + yellow.
What to look for
Wall taken vs wall pulled
Same disappearing line, opposite meaning: ⊠ (taken) = real trading happened there, the level was fought over. Red (pulled) = nobody traded it, it was never real.
Wall holds → bounce
Price trades into a big bid, aggressive selling hits it, the wall stays (or refills) and price turns. Often comes with an absorption or iceberg marker.
Wall pulled → spoof
A big order disappears just before price reaches it. A red square marks it (pulled wall). It was there to impress, not to trade. Price often continues through the space it left.
Wall eaten → breakout
Aggressive volume trades through the wall (bubbles, sweeps, footprint imbalances) and the line ends where price crosses. Old resistance can now act as support.
Liquidity gap → fast move
A dark area with little resting size. Once price enters it, little stands in the way – moves through gaps are fast and often run to the next wall.
Stacking / migrating
Bids building up under price, or a wall that keeps moving up behind price, shows buyers willing to pay more. The opposite above price for sellers.
Magnet walls
Very large walls well away from price often attract it (stops and liquidations cluster around them) – then the reaction there matters more than the wall itself.
Settings that matter
| Setting | Where | Use it to… |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow = top % | Heatmap | Fewer yellow lines (lower %) on busy markets, more (higher %) on quiet ones. |
| Hide small | Heatmap | Remove the smallest orders so the chart is cleaner. |
| Liquidity strength | Heatmap | Fade normal liquidity so candles and walls stand out. |
| Bid / ask tint | Heatmap | 0 = no tint, higher = stronger green/red tint per side. |
| Contrast | Heatmap | Stretches the scale – higher shows more mid-size detail. |
| Walls must stay | Heatmap | Big orders that only flash for a second or two are not highlighted; raise it on jumpy markets. |
| Show heatmap | Heatmap | Turn it off completely for a clean candle / footprint chart. |
Walls lie, trades don't. Big orders can be cancelled at any time and are sometimes placed only to influence others. Judge a wall by how it behaves when price arrives – not by its size alone.
Why does a line continue right through a candle? The candle covers its whole timeframe (say 60 s) while price crossed the level in 2 s, and the three exchanges trade a few dollars apart. After the crossing the same price often fills with orders from the other side – watch the tint flip from green to red.
Trades: bubbles & tape
Trade bubbles are market orders. Green = aggressive buys, red = aggressive sells. Size of the bubble = size of the trade (all exchanges combined per half-second and price). Bubbles show you where the action happens on the heatmap. The chart never draws more bubbles than it has room for: zoomed out you only see the biggest prints, zoom in and the smaller ones appear.
The tape (right panel) lists only big prints – trades at least as big as the threshold shown at the top (auto: the top 3 % of trade sizes, or set your own in Chart → Signals → Big trade ≥). It also logs:
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| BUY / SELL | Big aggressive buy / sell, with price, size and exchange (BNF = Binance futures, BN-S = Binance spot, BYB, BY-S, OKX). |
| LIQL | A long position was liquidated (forced sell). |
| LIQS | A short position was liquidated (forced buy). |
| ICE↑ / ICE↓ | Iceberg found on the bid / ask (hidden size). |
| ABS↑ / ABS↓ | Absorption: selling soaked up by bids / buying soaked up by asks. |
| SWP↑ / SWP↓ | A buy / sell sweep (Chapter 8), with the volume of that run. Only sweeps that pass your Sweep sensitivity are listed. |
| TRAP | Buyers (red) or sellers (green) just got trapped, with their size and average entry. |
Rows with a lighter background are 3× the big-trade threshold or more. Turn on Chart → General → Sound alerts to hear big trades, icebergs, pulled walls and liquidations.
Clusters of big prints at one price with no follow-through are often more meaningful than one huge print. Compare the tape with the footprint at that price.
Candles, candle styles & footprint
Candles
Candles are built from the trades (bold, outlined so they stay readable on the heatmap). Pick their size with the timeframe menu, or let Auto pick from your zoom. Choose No candles as the candle style (next to the timeframe) if you want the pure heatmap.
Charts by activity: volume, delta, range, Renko
The timeframe button opens a menu with two halves. The top rows are candles by time (seconds to months). The bottom rows build candles by activity, so dead time is squeezed out of the chart:
- Volume (
200 v): a new candle every time that many coins have traded. Quiet hours shrink to a few candles, bursts spread out. - Delta (
20 Δ): a new candle every time buys minus sells reach that size. Each candle is one push by one side. - Range (
100 r): a new candle every time price has covered that range. - Renko (
50 R): bricks of that size; it takes two bricks to turn.
Pick a ready size (they are worked out from what the market really trades) or type your own in the box and press Enter. Every candle has the same width; the heatmap is averaged into each candle, and the footprint opens when you zoom in. These charts are built from the ticks held in your browser, so they reach back a few hours; signal markers are not drawn on them yet.
Footprint
Zoom in on time until a candle is about a thumb wide and it opens into a footprint: for every price row, the volume sold on the left and bought on the right (sells × buys). It works on every timeframe, 1s to 1M. Switch Zoom switches timeframe off (⚙ Chart → Candles) to stay on the timeframe you picked while you zoom; with it on, zooming in moves to smaller candles first.
The price rows group by themselves (5, 10, 25, 50 …) so the numbers stay readable: zoom in on price for finer rows. The footprint is built from the trades the server recorded on all exchanges, so on 15m and above it is exact for as long as the server has been recording. Older candles show an estimate rebuilt from small Binance candles: drawn grey, marked ≈, without imbalances. A candle that was only partly recorded says so (for example 80% recorded).
- Diagonal imbalances compare buys at one price with sells one row lower (that's how aggressive orders actually meet the book). Green cell = buyers dominated, red cell = sellers dominated.
- Stacked imbalances (3+ in a row) often mark a level that holds when price comes back.
- Delta under the candle = buys − sells. Strong positive delta in a candle that closes down = buyers absorbed – see Chapter 8.
- Unfinished auction: buys and sells both non-zero at the very high (or low) row – price often comes back to finish it.
Candle styles
Next to the timeframe at the top (and in Chart → Candles) you choose how the candles are drawn:
| Style | What you see | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Candles | Classic open / high / low / close. | The default – clean price action on the heatmap. |
| Profile candles (Pro) | A thin candle with its own volume at price next to it: green part = buys, red part = sells, length = volume. The POC (most traded price) is outlined; volumes are written on the rows once they are tall enough. Needs room – zoom in until candles are about 25 px wide. Works on every timeframe, including 1h / 1D. | Seeing where inside the candle the business was done. |
| Equi-volume | Normal candles, but the wider the body, the more volume traded (against the busiest candles on screen). | Telling a real move (wide) from a drift on no volume (thin) at a glance. |
| Delta candles | The body colour shows who was more aggressive (green = buyers, red = sellers) and how much (stronger = bigger delta). Wick and outline keep the up / down colour. | Spotting divergence: an up candle with a red body = price rose while sellers were the aggressors. |
| Volume bars | A new candle every time the same amount has traded, not every N minutes. On the time axis fast markets print many narrow bars, quiet ones a few wide bars. The line across each bar is its POC (pink when the POC sits in the wick – volume that was rejected). Size: automatic (about what normally trades in one candle of the chosen timeframe) or your own in Chart → Candles → Volume per bar. Available on the 1s–5m timeframes. | Cutting out the dead time: every bar is the same amount of business. |
| No candles | Only the heatmap and the price path. | Pure order-book reading. |
A POC at the very top or bottom of a candle (in the wick) often means trapped traders: lots of volume traded at a price that was then rejected.
High timeframes (15m and up)
Candles come from Binance perpetual data, so years of history are available. Behind them, CryptoDOM draws the recorded heatmap averaged per candle (for the period the order book was recorded – up to your plan's history), GEX, sessions, drawings and indicators. Liquidity below a candle's low is tinted as bids, above its high as asks.
Event markers – what CryptoDOM detects for you
The server watches every trade and every book change on all exchanges and marks the events that matter. Each can be turned on/off in Chart → Signals.
How markers stay readable
- Short tags:
ICE,ABS,PRESS,TRAP,SWEEP,LIQplus the size in coins. Green = bullish side, red = bearish side. - Hover a marker and a card tells you what happened in plain words: size, prices, how unusual it was, how long ago.
- Labels never overlap, never bury the candles, and the chart only carries as many as it has room for. What is still in play or just happened comes first, then the strongest. The rest keep their marker – hover them, or zoom in.
- What is over fades: a released trap becomes a small grey ring, a broken absorption a faint dashed box. No label, still there to study.
- The tag button in the left toolbar (Alt+L) hides all labels; the candle button (Alt+C) shows candles only.
◆ Iceberg (hidden size)
Far more traded at one price than was ever shown there, while the level keeps refilling after being eaten. Someone is hiding a large order and showing only a small part of it.
- On the bid (green line): a hidden buyer defending the price. On the ask (red): a hidden seller capping it.
- The line grows as long as the iceberg keeps absorbing; the number is the hidden amount in coins.
- Filter: Iceberg filter (2×–16× a big trade) or a fixed Iceberg min size.
- Use: an iceberg holding at a heatmap wall is strong confirmation; an iceberg that finally gets broken often leads to a fast move.
▬ Absorption zone
Heavy aggressive selling (or buying) concentrated at one price, but price doesn't move through it – effort without result. Passive orders soaked it all up. Unlike an iceberg, it doesn't need a refilling visible order – only aggression that fails.
How it is measured: (1) the aggressive volume of one side over 10 s ranks in the top few % of all 10 s windows of the last 2 hours of that market, (2) at least half of it hit one zone (a price ± 1 step), (3) price moved at most 2 steps (or half a typical 15 s move) through it, and (4) 5 s later the level still holds. Because it is ranked against recent history, it adapts to BTC vs a memecoin and to a quiet Sunday vs the US open. A zone that later breaks by 2 steps is shown dashed with ABS ✕ – failed absorption is information too.
- Green zone = sellers hit the bids and buyers absorbed it (often bullish). Red zone = buyers hit the asks and sellers absorbed it (often bearish).
- The zone stretches for as long as it lasts; the number is the total volume absorbed.
- Filter: Absorption sensitivity – Strong only (top 1 %), Normal (top 3 %), More (top 8 %).
- Use: absorption at a known level (wall, VWAP, POC, GEX zone) after a push is one of the cleanest reversal clues. Absorption in the middle of nowhere matters less.
▲▼ Buy / sell pressure
One side keeps hitting the book and price is giving way in that direction – the opposite of absorption: aggression that is working.
How it is measured: net delta over 15 s ranks in the top few % of the last 2 hours, at least 55 % of the volume is one-sided, at least 2 of the three 5 s parts agree, and price moved at least 3 steps (or 1.5× a typical 15 s move) that way. One arrow per episode; a new one on the same side needs a 45 s pause. Filter: Pressure sensitivity.
- A small triangle where the push is, with a faint line back to where it began; the number is the net aggressive volume.
- Use: pressure that runs into a wall and turns into absorption = momentum is fading. Pressure through a pulled wall = continuation.
⊗ Trapped buyers / sellers
Traders who chased a breakout with market orders at the high (low), and price came straight back through the price they paid. They are now stuck on a loss, and their stops and exits often fuel the move the other way.
How it is measured: one side's aggressive volume over 10 s ranks in the top 15 % of the last 2 hours and is at least 1.5× the other side, while price is at its 3-minute high (low). Their volume and average entry price are tracked while the chase lasts. If within 90 s price falls back at least 3 steps (or 1.5× a typical 15 s move) below their average entry (above it for sellers) and stays there for 3 seconds, they are marked trapped – a one-tick dip does not count. They are released the moment price trades back to their entry. One per side per minute. Filter: Trap sensitivity.
- ⊗ = the moment it failed, at their average entry price (where they break even); the number = how much they bought (sold). Red = trapped buyers (above price), green = trapped sellers (below price).
- While they are still trapped a dashed line runs on to the live edge – that is where their exits wait. Once price trades back through their entry they are released: the marker becomes a small grey ring, the label goes and the line stops there (kept as history; hover it for the details).
- Use: trapped buyers above + price failing to get back to their line = good short context, often towards the next wall below. Price reclaiming the line = they are released and the idea is off.
⊠ ■ Walls taken, pulled or added – and still active
Every big order on the heatmap ends in one of three ways, and CryptoDOM tells you which:
- ⊠ White crossed box – taken: the order was filled by trades. Real buyers/sellers ate it. Taken walls at the end of a move often mark where the aggressor ran out (or broke through).
- ■ Red square – pulled: removed without being traded (cancelled).
- ■ Blue square – added: a big order suddenly placed.
- Line reaching the live edge – still active: big orders in the book right now are drawn at full strength in the empty space ahead of price, so you instantly see which walls are still there.
- Pulled walls right in front of price = spoofing or traders changing their mind. Price often travels into the space they left.
- Added walls right behind price = someone stepping in to defend.
- Whole-book appear/disappear events (an exchange reconnecting) are filtered out automatically.
↕ Sweep
One fast run that walks the book: price makes a new high (low) every half second without a pause, for at most 3 seconds, on unusually big aggressive volume. Someone had to get filled now and took every level in the way.
How it is measured: (1) the run moves price at least 4 price steps and 2.5× a typical 15-second move – roughly half a normal 1-minute candle, in seconds; (2) the aggressive volume of that side during the run (all exchanges) is at least 40 % of what normally trades in a whole minute; (3) that volume is ranked against the biggest sweep of each of the last 240 minutes of this market. Price travel is measured on one price feed, so the gap between spot and perp prices can never fake a move. Another run on the same side within 5 s continues the same sweep.
- The arrow runs from where it started to how far it pushed; the number is the volume. Green = buy sweep up, red = sell sweep down.
- Filter: Sweep sensitivity – Strong only (about 1–3 an hour), Normal (3–7 an hour), More (every sweep). Quiet hours show fewer, a liquidation cascade more.
- Hover it: the card also says when the sweep took out the high / low of the last 15 minutes, hour or 4 hours – a stop run.
- Zoomed out, sweeps that would sit on top of each other are drawn as one arrow with their total; zoom in to see them one by one.
- Use: a sweep into a wall that then holds (absorption right after it) is a classic exhaustion / stop-run. A sweep through a level with no wall behind it = continuation.
━ Liquidations
Leveraged positions closed by the exchange. Amber = longs liquidated (forced selling), purple = shorts liquidated (forced buying). Longer and thicker line = bigger.
- Cascades (many in a row) mean forced traders, not opinion. Once they're done, the move often stalls – the fuel ran out.
- Big liquidations into absorption or a wall are classic reversal spots.
Status bar counts (icebergs, absorptions, sweeps, liqs) tell you at a glance how active the session is. A quiet market produces few markers – that's normal.
VWAP, volume profile & CVD
Session VWAP
The orange dashed line is the volume-weighted average price since 00:00 UTC – the "fair price" of the day. Above VWAP buyers are in control on average, below it sellers are. Reclaims and losses of VWAP with strong delta are classic intraday signals. For VWAP from any point you choose, use the Anchored VWAP drawing tool.
Volume profile (right side)
Volume traded at each price over everything on screen, split into buys and sells. High-volume areas act as magnets and support/resistance; low-volume areas are passed quickly. The orange outline is the POC.
CVD pane
- CVD (blue) – cumulative buys minus sells. Price up + CVD up = healthy. Price up + CVD flat/down = buying is drying up or someone is absorbing.
- Delta bars – buys minus sells per column.
- Book imbalance (yellow) – bids vs asks within ±0.25 % of price. Up = more bids close to price.
Volume bars
Candles that each contain the same amount of volume are now a candle style on the main chart: pick Volume bars next to the timeframe (see Chapter 7). Busy periods make many bars, quiet periods few – a clean view of where the real activity was, right on top of the heatmap.
Divergence cheat-sheet
- New high, CVD lower high → buyers weaker → watch for reversal.
- New low, CVD higher low → sellers weaker → watch for bounce.
- Price flat, CVD falling hard → passive buyers absorbing → potential squeeze up.
GEX – options gamma levels (BTC & ETH)
Options market makers (dealers) hedge their books by buying or selling the coin as price moves. CryptoDOM estimates that hedging from Deribit open interest (Black-Scholes gamma per strike) and draws:
| Item | Looks like | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| GEX per strike | Bars from the left edge, green/red, with $ value | How much dealers must hedge per 1 % move at that strike. Big bars = important strikes. |
| Call wall | Green shaded zone | Strikes with the most positive call gamma. Often acts as resistance / a ceiling; price can "pin" there into expiry. |
| Put wall | Red shaded zone | Strikes with the most put gamma. Often acts as support / a floor. |
| Γ flip | Yellow dashed line | Where total gamma changes sign. |
The walls are drawn as zones, not lines: the wall strike plus neighbouring strikes holding at least 40 % of its gamma, padded by half the strike spacing. Hedging gets heavy across that whole area, not at one exact price.
Positive GEX (above the flip)
Dealers buy dips and sell rips to stay hedged → moves get dampened, ranges and mean reversion are more likely.
Negative GEX (below the flip)
Dealers sell into drops and buy into rallies → moves get amplified, trends and volatility expand.
The total GEX line at the bottom of the chart tells you which regime you're in. Data refreshes every minute; turn it on/off in Chart → Signals → GEX. The wall zones are drawn as a faint wash with a solid bracket at the right edge, so the heatmap underneath stays readable.
GEX is an estimate based on public open interest and an assumption about who is long or short the options. Use it as a map of likely friction, not as exact levels.
Indicators & futures data
Click ƒx Indicators. Search, click to add, then change settings (lengths, colours, sources) under On your chart. Overlays draw on the price chart, oscillators get their own pane under it. Indicators work on every timeframe; their own timeframe can be set (Auto follows the chart).
Trend / overlays
MA, EMA, WMA, Bollinger Bands, Donchian, Keltner, Supertrend, Parabolic SAR, VWAP (from candles).
Momentum
RSI, MACD, Stochastic, Stoch RSI, KDJ, CCI, Williams %R, MFI, ADX/DMI, ROC, TRIX.
Volume
Volume, taker buy/sell volume, CVD (candles), OBV, ATR.
Futures positioning
Open interest, OI change, funding rate, long/short ratio (accounts), top traders L/S (accounts & positions), taker buy/sell ratio, premium/basis.
Quick packs
Binance default (MA 7/25/99 + volume), Futures pack (OI, L/S, funding, taker), RSI + MACD.
Remove all
Chart → General → Remove all indicators.
Reading open interest with price
| Price | Open interest | Usually means |
|---|---|---|
| ↑ | ↑ | New longs opening – trend has fuel (but leverage is building). |
| ↑ | ↓ | Shorts closing (short squeeze) – strong but can run out. |
| ↓ | ↑ | New shorts opening – bearish pressure building. |
| ↓ | ↓ | Longs closing / liquidated – washout, often near a low. |
Funding very positive = longs paying a lot (crowded long); very negative = crowded short. Extremes plus a stalling price often precede squeezes against the crowd. Premium = perp price vs index: spot-led moves (low premium) tend to be healthier than perp-led ones.
Drawing tools
The toolbar on the left of the chart. Pick a tool, click on the chart (two clicks for lines and shapes). Click a drawing to select it – a small bar appears to change colour or delete it, and disappears again when nothing is selected. Drawings are saved per symbol in your browser.
| Tool | Clicks | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Trend line | 2 | Trends, channels. |
| Horizontal ray / line | 1 | Levels from the heatmap, POCs, prior highs/lows. |
| Vertical line | 1 | News times, session opens. |
| Rectangle · Circle | 2 | Zones, absorption areas, consolidation boxes. |
| Fibonacci | 2 | Pullback levels (0.382, 0.5, 0.618…). |
| Measure | 2 | Price distance, % and time between two points. |
| Anchored VWAP | 1 (on a candle) | Average price paid since a swing high/low or news – who is in profit. |
| Long / Short position | 1 | Plan a trade: entry, stop and target with risk/reward. Drag the handles. |
| Text note | 1 | Notes on the chart (Enter to save, Esc to cancel). |
Esc cancels the current drawing, Del deletes the selected one, the eye icon hides all drawings, the bin deletes them all.
Market sessions
Open ⚙ Chart → Sessions and tick the ones you want: Sydney (07–16 local), Tokyo (09–18), London (08–17), New York (08–17) and the NY stock market (09:30–16:00). They're shaded on the chart, summer time is handled automatically and weekends are skipped.
Crypto trades 24/7 but liquidity doesn't. The London open and the US stock open are when big participants arrive – volume, walls and fake-outs cluster there. The Asia session is often a range that the next session breaks.
Replay
Replay is part of Pro (the last 7 days of recorded order book and trades).
- Open Replay, choose a start time (your local time) and a speed (1× to 60×).
- Play. The heatmap, trades, footprint and every marker rebuild exactly as they happened. Pause any time.
- Back to live returns to the live chart.
Use replay to study big moves you missed, practise reading the book without risking money, and check how a setup really unfolded. Review the last liquidation cascade at 5×, then at 1× to see the details.
Markets & tickers
- Recorded 24/7: BTC, ETH, SOL and XAU (gold, Binance perpetual). Full history and replay for these.
- On demand: 50+ more (BNB, XRP, DOGE, ADA, AVAX, LINK, SUI, TON, HYPE, TAO, WIF, TRUMP, VIRTUAL…). They start collecting when someone opens them, so history begins at that moment and grows while open.
- Memecoins in thousands: 1000PEPE, 1000SHIB, 1000BONK, 1000FLOKI are shown per 1,000 coins like on the perpetual markets. Spot books are converted automatically so all exchanges line up.
- Exchanges merged: Binance (futures + spot), Bybit (futures + spot), OKX (futures). Each line in the status bar shows whether an exchange feed is live.
Settings reference
Everything in ⚙ Chart, tab by tab. The panel docks on the left, so you see the chart change while you set it. Settings are saved in your browser.
Candles
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Candle style | Candles · Profile candles · Equi-volume · Delta candles · Volume bars · No candles (the same choice is next to the timeframe). See Chapter 7. |
| Volume per bar | Volume bars only: how much each bar holds. 0 = automatic. |
| POC on each candle | A yellow line on every candle at the price where it traded the most. A POC out in a wick marks where a sweep or rejection did its business. Before the recording it is an estimate. |
| Footprint when zoomed in | Candles open into footprint cells once they are wide enough, on every timeframe. |
| Zoom switches timeframe | Zooming in on high-timeframe candles opens the recorded heatmap; zooming out goes back to candles. |
| Last price line | Dashed line at the last price across the chart. |
| Price path line | The trail price draws on the heatmap as it moves. |
| Bid / ask lines · Spread label | Best bid and ask as two lines, with the spread; orange when the spread is unusually wide. |
Heatmap
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Show heatmap | On/off. |
| Style | Liquidity + highlighted big walls (default) or Full colour heatmap. |
| Bid / ask tint | How strongly bids are tinted green and asks red. |
| Liquidity strength | How visible normal liquidity is. |
| Contrast | Stretch of the scale. |
| Big walls = top % | Share of visible liquidity drawn as "big" (yellow). 0.5 % default. |
| Walls must stay | How long a big order must stay before it is highlighted (flashing spoof quotes are not). |
| Hide small | Hide orders smaller than this % of the big-order level. |
| Grey out levels price already went through | Spent liquidity turns grey; untested big walls stay yellow, in front of the candles. |
Signals
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Trade bubbles · Big trade ≥ | Market orders as circles; the size (in coins) that counts as a big print for the bubbles and the tape. 0 = automatic. |
| Liquidations · grey out · style | Show liquidations; grey the ones price traded back through; grouped thin lines (default) or every single one. |
| Session VWAP | On/off. |
| Icebergs · Iceberg filter · min size | Show hidden orders; how big before they're shown. |
| Absorption · sensitivity | Show absorption zones; how unusual vs the last 2 h they must be (top 1 / 3 / 8 %). |
| Buy / sell pressure · sensitivity | Show pressure markers; same ranking. |
| Trapped buyers / sellers · sensitivity | Show trapped traders; same ranking (top 3 / 8 / 15 %). |
| Walls taken / pulled / added | ⊠ = big order filled by trades, red = cancelled, blue = newly placed. |
| Sweeps · sensitivity | Show sweeps; Strong only (1–3 an hour), Normal (3–7 an hour), More (every sweep). |
| GEX | Options gamma levels (BTC, ETH). |
Sessions
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Sydney · Tokyo · London · New York · NY stock market | Shade each session on the chart (Chapter 13). |
Colours
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Colour template | CryptoDOM (green up / red down, yellow walls – the default), Asia (red up / green down), Colour-blind safe (blue / orange), Green / blue, Blue / grey + green, White / blue, Classic (green/red, yellow walls), TradingView (teal/red), Purple & green, Blue & pink, Electric (blue/orange), Black & white, Ice (cyan/magenta). |
| Legend panel | The panel on the left explaining every colour and marker that is switched on. |
General
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tape panel | Show/hide the tape on the right. |
| Sound alerts | Sound on big trades, icebergs, pulled walls and liquidations. |
| Reset chart view | Back to now, centred, default zoom (same as the Reset view button on the chart). |
| Remove all indicators | Clears every indicator. |
| Reset all settings | Back to the defaults. |
Playbooks – six ways traders use CryptoDOM
These are common order-flow setups, written as checklists. They are frameworks to study and practise in Replay, not signals to follow blindly. Always define your stop before you enter.
1 · Absorption at a wall (reversal)
- Price pushes into a yellow wall or a known level (put wall zone, POC, VWAP, prior low).
- Aggressive selling (red bubbles, sell imbalances, maybe long liquidations) hits it.
- The wall holds or refills and a green absorption zone or bid iceberg appears.
- Delta stays negative but price stops making lower lows – sellers are being absorbed.
- Entry on the first push back up with buy imbalances / buy pressure.
2 · Pulled wall breakout (spoof run)
- A big ask sits above price and price stalls under it.
- The wall is pulled (red square) before it's tested – nobody actually wanted to sell there.
- Buy sweeps and buy pressure appear; footprint shows stacked buy imbalances.
- Enter on the break of the level the wall was "protecting"; target the next wall or liquidity gap.
3 · Liquidation cascade exhaustion
- A fast move with a burst of liquidation lines (amber = longs on a dump, purple = shorts on a pump).
- The move reaches a heatmap wall, GEX zone or round number.
- Liquidations stop, absorption or an iceberg appears, CVD flattens while price stalls.
- Enter in the other direction once price reclaims the level where the cascade ended.
4 · Iceberg defence
- An iceberg appears and keeps growing at one price (the ICE number rises).
- Price tests it several times without breaking it.
- Trade bounces off it with a tight stop beyond the iceberg price.
- If it finally breaks with a sweep through it, flip: the defender is out and the move is often fast.
5 · VWAP reclaim with delta
- Price has been below session VWAP.
- It crosses back above with positive delta, buy imbalances and CVD rising.
- Pullback to VWAP holds (absorption / bids stacking just under it).
- Enter on the hold; target the POC above, the next wall or the call wall zone.
6 · GEX regime: fade vs follow
- Check where price is versus the Γ flip and the total GEX at the bottom of the chart.
- Positive GEX: prefer fading moves into the call wall / put wall zones (ranges, pinning).
- Negative GEX: prefer breakouts and trend continuation; zones can break with momentum.
- Use order flow (Playbooks 1–5) to time entries inside the regime.
Routine, risk & common mistakes
A simple daily routine
- Context (5 min, 1h–4h chart): trend, key levels, VWAP, GEX regime and zones, funding and open interest.
- Map (5 min, 5m–15m): mark big walls, yesterday's high/low, POCs, liquidity gaps with horizontal rays.
- Plan: write which setups you'll take at which levels, where you're wrong (stop) and your max loss for the day.
- Execute (1s–1m): only at your levels, only when the order flow confirms.
- Review (Replay): replay your trades and the best move of the day. Screenshot and journal.
Risk basics
- Decide your stop first, then size the position so the stop costs a small, fixed share of your account.
- Use the Long/Short position tool to see risk/reward before entering.
- Stop for the day after a set number of losses. Order flow is fast – tilt is expensive.
Mistakes everyone makes at first
Trading every wall
Most walls get pulled or eaten. A wall is a place to watch, not a reason to enter.
Fighting a cascade
Catching a falling knife during liquidations. Wait for the cascade to stop and absorption to show.
One signal = trade
A single iceberg or bubble is noise. Look for 2–3 things agreeing at one level.
Zoomed in all day
1s charts without context make every wiggle look important. Check the higher timeframe first.
Plans, payments & affiliate programme
Free
The live BTC heatmap, candles 1s–1M, trade bubbles, tape, liquidations, VWAP, CVD, depth and volume profile, price indicators, drawing tools and sessions – with the last 15 minutes of history. No account needed. Where Pro detected an iceberg or absorption you see a 🔒 pin.
Pro
Everything in Free plus the footprint and profile candles, icebergs, absorption, pressure, walls taken / pulled / added and sweeps, all markets, 24 h history, replay of the last 7 days, the recorded heatmap behind 15m+ candles, GEX and futures data (OI, funding, long/short, taker, premium).
- Free trial: every new account gets Pro automatically for the first days (one trial per person) – no card, nothing to cancel.
- Paying: in crypto – pick the coin first (USDT on TRON or BNB Chain and USDC on Solana cost under $1 in fees), you go straight to the address and exact amount. Payments up to 5 % short (exchange withdrawal fees) are accepted. No subscription – paying again adds days. Choose 1 week, 1 month, 1 year or lifetime.
- Promo codes: enter on the Account page before paying.
- Affiliate programme: every account has a referral link (Account page). People who sign up through it are yours; you earn a commission on every payment they make, sent automatically to your wallet (USDT on TRON/Ethereum/BNB Chain/Solana, USDC on Solana, BTC or ETH) as soon as the minimum is reached. Your dashboard shows clicks, sign-ups, sales and payouts.
Troubleshooting & FAQ
The chart says "Waiting for data from the exchanges…"
The server is connecting to the exchanges. It normally takes a few seconds. If it stays, check the status bar – each exchange shows live or reconnecting. Refreshing the page reconnects you.
I'm lost somewhere in the past / price is off-screen
Click ▶ Live (bottom right of the chart – it is there whenever you are looking at the past) or double-click the chart: back to now with Follow price on. Reset view next to it (or Alt+R) also puts the zoom back to default.
What are the dotted vertical lines with "no data"?
Moments when nothing was recorded (server restart, connection lost). The gap is marked so you don't mistake it for a market event. Walls that seem to start at a gap are just the book appearing again.
A symbol shows "needs Pro"
The free plan includes BTC. Other markets, longer history and replay need Pro.
Why is the price slightly different from my exchange?
CryptoDOM combines several exchanges; the last price comes from the most liquid one that traded last (Binance futures first). Differences of a few dollars between exchanges are normal.
An on-demand coin has almost no history
On-demand markets start recording when someone opens them. Leave it open and history builds up. BTC, ETH, SOL and XAU are recorded 24/7.
Too many markers / too busy
Raise the Iceberg and Absorption filters, lower "Big walls = top %", raise "Hide small", lower Grey strength, or turn off bubbles. Different markets need different settings.
Not enough yellow / walls not showing
Raise "Big walls = top %" (e.g. 1–2 %) or raise Contrast. On quiet markets the biggest orders are smaller, so relative settings help.
Does it work on phone and tablet?
Yes – one finger moves, pinch sideways zooms time, pinch up/down zooms price, double-tap goes back to now. On small screens the tape is hidden to keep the chart big.
My laptop fan spins up
Zoomed in at the live edge, the chart redraws about 30 times per second so scrolling is smooth. Zoom out a bit, close the tape, or remove indicators to use less CPU.
Is the data delayed?
No – it's streamed live from the exchanges and updated every 0.5 s. Open interest, funding and long/short ratios come from the exchanges' own statistics, which they update every few minutes.
Are drawings and settings saved?
Yes, in your browser (per symbol for drawings). A different browser or device starts fresh.
Glossary
- Absorption
- Aggressive orders that fail to move price because passive orders soak them up.
- Aggressor
- The side that crossed the spread with a market order (buyer lifting the ask, seller hitting the bid).
- Anchored VWAP
- VWAP calculated from a point you choose, e.g. a swing low or a news candle.
- Ask / offer
- A resting sell order; the best ask is the lowest one.
- Bid
- A resting buy order; the best bid is the highest one.
- Call wall / put wall
- Strike zones with the most call / put gamma – likely resistance / support from dealer hedging.
- Cascade
- Liquidations triggering more liquidations as price moves.
- CVD
- Cumulative volume delta – running total of buys minus sells.
- Delta
- Aggressive buy volume minus sell volume for a candle, row or period.
- Depth
- The amount of resting orders at each price right now.
- Footprint
- A candle split into price rows showing sells × buys at each price.
- Funding rate
- Periodic payment between longs and shorts on perpetual futures that keeps the perp close to spot.
- GEX
- Gamma exposure – how much options dealers must buy or sell to hedge per 1 % move.
- Gamma flip
- Price where total dealer gamma changes from positive to negative.
- Iceberg
- A large order shown in small pieces that keep refilling.
- Imbalance
- One side trading ≥ 3× the other at neighbouring footprint prices.
- Liquidation
- A leveraged position closed by the exchange because margin ran out.
- Liquidity gap
- A price area with little resting size – price moves through fast.
- Open interest
- Total number of open futures contracts.
- Perpetual (perp)
- A futures contract with no expiry, kept near spot by funding.
- POC
- Point of control – the price with the most traded volume in a candle or range.
- Pressure
- Sustained one-sided aggression that is moving price.
- Taken wall
- A big order that disappeared because trades filled it (⊠ on the chart).
- Pulled wall
- A big order cancelled without being traded.
- Spoofing
- Placing large orders with no intention to trade, to influence others.
- Spread
- Gap between best bid and best ask.
- Stacked imbalance
- Three or more imbalances in a row on one side.
- Sweep
- An aggressive order that clears several price levels at once.
- Tape
- The list of executed trades (time and sales).
- VWAP
- Volume-weighted average price.
- Wall
- An unusually large resting order or cluster at one price.