Seven findings from recording the Bitcoin futures order book and options market, the ones that surprised us and the ones that disappointed us, and where you can watch each of them live for free.
We build Swiftedge, a set of free browser tools that show what happens inside the Bitcoin and Ethereum markets: where orders wait, where they trade, and where they disappear. Building them meant recording the order book four times a second, every trade, and the options market around it, for months. We started testing the popular claims about order flow against that data.
Some held up. Some did not. Here are seven of them.
1. About half of the big walls near price are pulled, not traded
We took four weeks of the Bitcoin perpetual futures book and classified every large wall (a 25 USD price level in the top 3 % of resting size that day, standing for at least six minutes) by how it ended.
Of the 244 large walls that disappeared while price was close and could be classified cleanly, 116 were pulled, not traded. The median one vanished in 0.3 seconds, 71 % within a single second, and it lost 97 % of its size in that moment. Bids and asks were pulled about equally often (55 and 61).
One example: on 18 October 2026 a bid of about 416 BTC, roughly 34 million dollars, sat at 81,960, 34 USD under price, for 30 minutes. At 11:54 UTC it was cancelled in 0.3 seconds. Over its whole life, 7 BTC had traded at that price.
Where to see it: in Swiftedge Depth a wall is a bright band; when it is cancelled the band simply stops. The daily Bitcoin report lists which walls held, which were eaten and which were pulled in each session. Full method: Bitcoin spoofing and pulled walls.
2. Distance decides almost everything
The same study showed one variable that mattered more than size or side: how far the wall was from price when it disappeared.
| Distance from price | Pulled | Eaten |
|---|---|---|
| Under 25 USD | 20 % | 75 % |
| 25 to 75 USD | 62 % | 27 % |
| 75 to 150 USD | 88 % | 0 % |
| Over 150 USD | 94 % | 3 % |
Walls that vanished more than 75 USD from price were cancelled 92 % of the time. A big wall far away is a statement of intent that is cheap to withdraw. A wall that price is already trading into is a different thing.
3. Price is not simply pulled toward the thickest liquidity
A common idea is that price is drawn to the biggest resting liquidity like a magnet. In 85 hours of our recordings (August 2026), the thickest resting size usually sat 100 to 250 USD or more from price, while a typical five-minute Bitcoin move was about 30 USD (90 % of them under roughly 130 USD). Most of the time, the thickest liquidity is simply too far away to be the next target.
This is also where an order book heatmap and a liquidation heatmap differ. One shows orders that are really resting in the book. The other is a model of where leveraged positions would be force-closed. Both are useful, and they answer different questions. We put both side by side: the live order book heatmap and a free Bitcoin liquidation heatmap that is checked against the real liquidations. The difference is explained in liquidation heatmap vs order book heatmap.
4. CVD describes the hour. It did not predict the next one
Cumulative volume delta (aggressive buying minus aggressive selling) is one of the most quoted order flow numbers. Over 24,528 hours of Bitcoin data (January 2024 to October 2026), an hour's delta and that same hour's price change had a correlation of 0.75, and pointed the same way in 77 % of hours.
Then we checked the next hour. The correlation between an hour's delta and the following hour's price change was 0.002. For practical purposes, zero, and it stayed near zero in both halves of the data.
CVD tells you clearly who was aggressive. It does not tell you what happens next. In Depth it is drawn over the volume pane, reset at 00:00 UTC. Details: What is CVD?
5. Most stacked imbalances get traded through
A stacked imbalance is aggressive buying or selling that outweighs the other side on several prices in a row, a pattern many footprint traders mark as support or resistance. In 41 hours of Bitcoin data, 72 % of stacked imbalance zones were traded through within five minutes, and only about 8 % were still unbroken after an hour. Bigger zones did not hold much better: six or more rows broke within five minutes 68 % of the time, against 75 % for three rows.
Depth now has a footprint chart (buying and selling at every price inside each candle, with imbalances, POC and delta) and an indicator that marks stacked imbalance zones, so you can watch them form and break. Method: Stacked imbalances explained, with data.
6. Options gamma changed volatility. Trading the walls did not work
Options dealers hedge, and when they are estimated to be long gamma, their hedging tends to dampen moves. Over 6,680 hours of Bitcoin data (January to October 2026), hours our model classed as long gamma were followed by about 19 % lower volatility in the next hour (roughly 32 versus 40 basis points).
That sounds tradable. So we tested the obvious strategy: fade price back toward the middle when it reached the options call wall or put wall, in the long-gamma regime. Over nine months it lost money after costs, and did worse than all 20 sets of random levels we compared it with.
The levels describe the options market. They are not a trading system. You can see them live in Swiftedge Options, one chain across the major options venues where row height shows the options-implied odds of settling near each strike (what options cost, not a forecast), and on Bitcoin levels today. Five guides start here: What is GEX?
7. Expiry day concentrates a lot of open interest at one minute
Bitcoin options expire at 08:00 UTC. In a snapshot on 19 October 2026, the monthly expiry on 30 October held about 162,400 BTC, roughly 13.4 billion dollars, which was 37.7 % of all open Bitcoin options. Calls outweighed puts (put/call 0.56), and options priced a move of about ±5.9 % by expiry.
Each monthly and quarterly expiry now gets its own page three weeks before, with open interest by strike, max pain and the priced move, and afterwards where it settled: 30 October 2026 expiry. Why 08:00 UTC matters: Bitcoin options expiry, explained.
The free toolbox behind these numbers
Everything above runs in the browser, free, with no account:
- Swiftedge Depth: the live Bitcoin futures order book as a heatmap, updated four times a second with at least 24 hours of history, every trade as a bubble. Price as a line, candlesticks from 1 second to 4 hours, or a footprint chart. Add VWAP, real liquidations, stacked imbalance zones, an imbalance readout, CVD, options GEX levels, Session Orbs for the Tokyo, London and New York opening ranges, Mentor (a plain-language read of structure, liquidity and order flow) and 24 drawing tools. Price and large-wall alerts, sharing any moment as an image card, and it installs as an app.
- Swiftedge Options: the live options chain with open interest by strike, live trades, call wall, put wall, gamma flip and max pain, plus alerts when Bitcoin nears a wall or crosses the flip.
- Live data pages: levels, liquidations, liquidation heatmap, funding, open interest, long/short ratio, whale trades and options expiries.
- Reports: a daily Bitcoin report written from the data for the Asia, London and New York sessions, and a weekly report every Sunday, with an RSS feed.
- Ethereum, the same way: since 20 October everything exists for Ethereum too: ETH Depth, ETH options, ETH reports, levels and liquidation heatmap.
- A free widget to put the live heatmap on your own site, and 42 free SwiftEdge indicators on TradingView.
- Guides and a glossary in plain English, several of them testing their claims against our own recordings, like the ones above.
What this is not
None of this is financial advice, and none of the findings is a buy or sell call. Several of them are the opposite: things that sounded predictive and were not. The options-implied odds describe what options cost, not what will happen. Depth is in public beta, so features change often; what changed lately is on the updates page.
What we can promise is that the numbers come from the data, with the period and the method stated, and that we show what did not work as clearly as what did.
Swiftedge is built by Swiftedge ApS in Denmark. Watch the live Bitcoin order book: swiftedge.uk
