# Reading an Orderbook Heatmap A heatmap shows where traders have parked limit orders over time, so you can watch liquidity build up, move and disappear instead of guessing from one frozen snapshot of the book. ## From a snapshot to a picture of time A normal orderbook tells you what is resting at each price right now. Refresh it two seconds later and the numbers have changed, and you have no memory of what was there before. The heatmap fixes that. It takes the book at regular intervals and paints each snapshot as a thin vertical slice, with price on the vertical axis and time running left to right. The brighter the colour at a price, the more size was resting there at that moment. Candles are drawn on top, so you see where price actually traded against where people said they wanted to trade. The first time you open it, it looks like noise. Give it ten minutes. Your eye starts to pick out horizontal bands that stay bright for a long time, and those are the levels worth paying attention to. ## How a wall appears Say BTC is trading at 99,400. Over twenty minutes a bright band forms at 100,000 on the ask side, then thickens. That is not a mystery. Round numbers collect take-profit orders from longs, fresh short entries from people who think 100,000 will cap the move, and quotes from market makers who like to sit where others will trade. All of that size stacks into one line on the chart. Bands also form at the edges of a recent range, above an obvious high, and around levels that held earlier in the day. A wall is simply many people agreeing on a price. What matters is what they do when price gets close. ## Three things that happen to a wall When price walks toward a bright band, one of three things usually follows. - **Pulled.** The band goes dark a few ticks before price arrives. The size was cancelled. Whoever placed it did not want to be filled, or changed their mind. - **Absorbed.** Price trades into the band and you can see it thin out as market orders hit it. If price stalls while the band keeps getting hit, someone is happy to keep filling. If the band runs out and price keeps going, it was eaten. - **Moved.** The band hops up or down and stays just ahead of price. That is usually one participant managing a large order and not wanting to be the last one filled. Each of these tells you something different. An absorbed wall that holds is real interest. A pulled wall tells you the level was never defended. A wall that keeps stepping away is a hint that someone is leaning on the market without committing. ## Spoofing and why you should stay suspicious Some walls are placed with no intention of being filled. The idea is to make other traders believe there is a floor or a ceiling, get them to trade in that direction, and then cancel. This is called spoofing. From the chart you cannot read anyone's intent, but certain patterns should make you careful: a very large order that appears all at once, sits a few ticks from price, and vanishes the moment price comes within reach. If you see the same behaviour two or three times in a session, treat that size as decoration. The practical rule is simple. Resting liquidity is a statement, not a promise. It only counts once it has been traded against. ## What it means for support, resistance and breakouts A heatmap band does not make a level support or resistance on its own. It becomes meaningful when price trades into it and the size gets hit without price moving through. That is a real buyer or seller doing work. Breakouts read the other way around. If price pushes into a thick ask band at 100,000, chews through it with heavy volume, and the band is gone, the sellers who were capping price have been filled. There is less in the way above, and a move through can run. If instead the band was pulled before contact and price drifts through on light volume, nobody was beaten. Those breakouts fail more often, because the sellers did not lose a fight, they just stepped aside and can come back. Dark gaps matter too. Where there is little resting size, price can travel quickly, because there is nothing to slow it down. ## Honest limits The heatmap only shows displayed liquidity on the venues in the feed. Iceberg orders show a small slice of their real size. Large traders can sit on other exchanges entirely. A heatmap can show you where the obvious size is, but it cannot tell you what will happen next. In Market Open, heatmap history is recorded for BTC, ETH and SOL since 14 Oct 2026. On every other market the heatmap builds live from the moment you open the chart, so it starts empty. ## Try it on Market Open 1. Open BTC on the 1m chart and add the Order Book Heatmap layer. 2. Mark the brightest band above price and the brightest below. Over the next hour, note for each approach whether the band was pulled, absorbed or moved. 3. Pick one bright band and watch the next approach live, without acting. Write down what happened before price got there. (Bar Replay plays candles and indicators but not the heatmap, so this one is done live.) 4. If you want to act on what you see, practise in the demo account first via "Try demo". _Educational content, not investment advice. Leveraged trading can lose more than your margin._