BTC Liquidity Heatmap (Order Book Heatmap)

A BTC liquidity heatmap, also called an order book heatmap, shows where limit orders are resting in the Bitcoin order book and how long they stay there. Time runs left to right, price runs bottom to top, and each cell’s color shows how much size is resting at that price at that moment. A large bid or ask that sits for hours becomes a bright horizontal band.

What the heatmap measures

An order book is the list of limit orders waiting to trade: bids (buy orders) below the current price and asks (sell orders) above it. An exchange’s depth display shows only the book as it stands right now, so nothing tells you which orders stayed and which were placed and canceled.

The heatmap solves this by stacking snapshots of the book side by side. Each vertical slice is one snapshot of resting size at every price level, and read across, the slices show how the book changed over time.

The heatmap covers BTC/USDT, ETH/USDT, SOL/USDT and XRP/USDT, built from order books on Binance, OKX, Bybit, Bitget, Coinbase and Kraken, with Binance, OKX, Bybit and Bitget selectable for each pair. Data updates every 5 minutes, and periods range from 12 hours to 1 month as collected history builds up.

How to read the chart

Brightness is resting size, not traded volume. A bright cell means a lot of liquidity was sitting at that price; it says nothing about whether any of it was filled. Colors are relative to the scale of the current view, so compare bands within the same chart rather than across pairs or periods. The Viridis, Inferno and Mono palettes change only how the scale looks, while the depth threshold and the Low to High control for largest levels change how much of the book stands out.

Bands show persistence. A short bright patch is an order that appeared briefly. A long unbroken band is an order, or a group of orders, that stayed at one price through many snapshots. The band’s left edge shows when the size arrived, and its right edge shows when it left.

Watch what happens when price meets a band. There are three possible outcomes:

• Traded through: price moves into the band, the band thins as it is filled, and price continues past it.
• Rejected: price touches the band and turns back while the band stays bright.
• Pulled: the band fades or vanishes before price arrives, so the liquidity was canceled rather than traded.

Hypothetical example: a bright bid band holds at 60,000 for several hours, and price bounces twice from just above it. Before a third approach, the band disappears while price is still above it. The bids were withdrawn, not filled, so the support they appeared to offer is gone. A filled wall would at least have absorbed selling on the way down.

What drives the bands

Resting liquidity changes when limit orders are placed, canceled, or filled by incoming market orders. Market makers quoting both sides, large traders working positions and algorithms that move their quotes with price all add and remove size. As price moves, levels deep in the book come close to the market and can be consumed, while new orders form behind the price.

You can summarize the balance between the two sides with an imbalance ratio over a chosen price range:

Imbalance = (bid size − ask size) ÷ (bid size + ask size)

The result runs from −1 (only asks) to +1 (only bids). For example, with 300 BTC of bids and 200 BTC of asks within 1% of the price, imbalance = (300 − 200) ÷ 500 = 0.2.

Limits of an order book heatmap

• Resting orders are not commitments. Any limit order can be canceled at any time. A large wall may be placed to influence other traders and pulled before it trades (spoofing, which is prohibited in regulated markets such as US futures). The heatmap shows that the order was displayed, not why.
• Snapshots miss short-lived orders. A chart built from periodic snapshots cannot show orders placed and canceled between two snapshots. With 5-minute updates, the heatmap reflects persistent liquidity, not tick-by-tick activity.
• Hidden size is invisible. Iceberg orders and other non-displayed liquidity do not appear in the book, so a level can absorb more than its color suggests.
• Coverage is limited to the listed venues. Liquidity on other exchanges, and in other BTC pairs or contract types, is not part of the picture.
• Executed trades are not plotted. To tell a filled band from a pulled one with confidence, compare it with trade flow in the large orders tracker and live crypto liquidations.

Liquidity heatmap vs. liquidation heatmap

The names sound alike but measure different things. A liquidity heatmap plots orders traders have actually placed on exchanges. A liquidation heatmap plots estimated prices where leveraged positions would be forcibly closed, derived from leverage and open interest assumptions rather than from orders visible in the book. A liquidation cluster can sit at a price with no resting orders at all, and a large order book wall can sit where few positions would be liquidated.