Takers, makers and volume delta
Every trade on an exchange matches two orders. One was already resting in the order book: that trader is the maker. The other arrived and filled against it straight away: that trader is the taker. Takers are the impatient side. A taker buyer lifts the ask because they want in now; a taker seller hits the bid because they want out now.
Volume delta for a period is taker buy volume minus taker sell volume. If $30M of market buys and $20M of market sells hit BTC in an hour, the delta for that hour is +$10M. Cumulative volume delta (CVD) is the running total of those deltas from a chosen starting point. It rises while aggressive buyers dominate and falls while aggressive sellers do.
Where the data comes from
Exchanges tag the aggressor on every public trade, so volume delta can be built from the trade stream. Some also put it in their candles: Binance's kline data includes the taker buy quote volume for each bar, so taker sells are the bar's quote volume minus that figure. Hyperliquid's candles have no taker split, but each trade in its public trade stream says whether the buyer or the seller was the aggressor.
This site builds a taker buy figure for every 1-minute bar on the markets it tracks: from Binance klines, and from the public trade streams of Bybit and Hyperliquid. When a minute has no reliable split, for example the first minute after a reconnect, it is counted as neutral rather than guessed. Those 1-minute bars are rolled up into 5-minute and 1-hour bars. The live box above sums the last 24 hours of hourly bars for BTC, separately for perpetuals and spot.
Why the starting point matters
CVD is a running sum, so its absolute level depends entirely on where the sum starts and which markets are included. A CVD of −$400M means nothing on its own. What matters is the shape over the window you are looking at: is it rising, falling or flat while price does something else? Two sites can show CVD lines at different levels for the same coin and both be right.
Spot CVD vs perp CVD
Splitting CVD by market type is one of its most useful features.
- Spot CVD reflects buyers and sellers of the actual coin. Rising spot CVD is often read as real demand.
- Perp CVD reflects leveraged traders opening and closing futures positions. A rally driven mainly by perp buying is more fragile, because those positions can be closed or liquidated just as fast.
When the two disagree, for example price rising with perp CVD up and spot CVD flat or falling, the move is being carried by leverage. Check open interest and funding to see how crowded that side has become.
Reading divergences
Price up, CVD down. Price rises while takers are net sellers. Passive buyers (limit orders) are absorbing the selling and moving price up, or shorts are covering through limit orders. Many traders read this as weakness in the rally, but absorption can also mean a large buyer is patiently filling.
Price down, CVD up. Aggressive buyers keep hitting the ask, yet price falls: large passive sellers are absorbing them. If the buyers stop, price can drop faster.
Price and CVD together. The move is being driven by market orders in its direction. It says the move is genuine, not that it will continue.
On short timeframes, one large market order can dominate CVD. That is why this site also flags individual volume spikes with their buy share: a minute where one market trades several times its normal volume, and whether takers were buying or selling. The BTC volume spikes page lists them with the price move afterwards.
Limits
- CVD only covers the exchanges and markets included. Off-exchange trades, other venues and options are missing.
- Wash trading and market-maker hedging add volume on both sides, which can make delta noisy on small coins.
- Taker volume shows urgency, not intent: a short closing with a market buy counts the same as a new long.
The BTC coin page shows the live buy/sell flow, spikes, funding and open interest in one place.
Checked against the exchanges' own documentation on 28 September 2026: Binance API: kline/candlestick data · Hyperliquid API: websocket subscriptions. Not financial advice.