Order Flow 2 / 7
Order Flow · Level 2Lesson 2 of 6

Reading the tape: who traded, and who was in a hurry

Every trade has a buyer and a seller, so "more buyers than sellers" is never what moves price. The tape shows something more useful: which side was in a hurry.

You will learn
  • What the tape shows: time, price, size and the side that traded at once
  • Why every trade has a buyer and a seller, and what "aggressive" means
  • What large prints, sweeps and bursts look like — and what they do not prove

Before you start: The order book lesson — bids, asks, limit orders and market orders. Every new word is underlined; hover or tap it for a short definition.

Every trade has a buyer and a seller

A trade happens when two orders meet: one to buy and one to sell, for the same amount at the same price. Every bitcoin bought in a trade was sold in that same trade. So "more buyers than sellers" cannot mean more coins bought than sold — those two numbers are always equal.

What differs is who was in a hurry. In every trade one order was already waiting in the order book — the maker. The other arrived and traded at once against it — the taker. The taker is the trade's aggressor: a buyer who accepted the ask, or a seller who accepted the bid.

The tape

The tape (time and sales), also called time and sales, is the list of trades as they happen: time, price, size and which side was the taker. Exchanges publish it in real time. On Binance every trade carries a flag that says whether the buyer was the maker. If yes, the seller was the taker — a red row. If not, the buyer was the taker — a green row.

A real minute, trade by trade

The tape — every trade of one real minute: BTC/USDT on Binance, 2 October 2026, 14:42 UTC, 1,267 rows. At 0:46.259 a market buy walked up the book in one millisecond: 121 rows from 86,002.92 to 86,033.90, 6.96 BTC in all. At 0:51.442, 85.3 BTC of market sells arrived within 8 milliseconds; 81.2 BTC of it filled at one price, 86,034.00, where large buy orders were waiting, and the rest pushed the price down to 86,012.71. Over the whole minute takers sold 98.4 BTC and bought 24.7 BTC, yet price ended only $7.55 lower.

What to look for

  • Size. Most rows are tiny — 849 of the 1,267 trades in that minute were under 0.01 BTC — so large rows stand out. But one large order can also be split into many small ones.
  • Speed. Rows bunched into the same instant mean urgency: one order taking several prices at once (a sweep), or many takers arriving together.
  • Price. Where trades happen matters as much as how many. In the minute above, 81 BTC of selling hit one price and did not get through it until the buy orders waiting there ran out.

One exchange, one market

Bitcoin trades on many exchanges and in futures markets as well as spot. The tape of Binance BTC/USDT spot is one busy market among them, and flows elsewhere can differ. Read one tape as one view, not as the whole market.

BTC/USDT, 2 October 2026, 14:42–14:43 UTC: takers bought 24.7 BTC and sold 98.4 BTC; the largest single row was a sell of 51.6 BTC (about $4.4M).

Check yourself · 1 of 2The tape shows a red row: 2.00000 BTC at 86,011.68. What happened?
Show the answer

Red means the seller was the taker: their order traded at once against a waiting bid, and the buyer was the maker. Every trade has both sides — the colour only says which one was in a hurry.

Check yourself · 2 of 2In one minute, takers bought 24.7 BTC and sold 98.4 BTC. How much bitcoin changed hands?
Show the answer

Each trade has one buyer and one seller, so volume counts it once: 24.7 BTC traded with a taker buyer and 98.4 BTC with a taker seller, 123.1 BTC in all. The 73.6 BTC difference is called delta — the next lesson is about it.

Takeaways
  1. Every trade has a buyer and a seller; what differs is which side was the taker.
  2. The tape lists trades as they happen: time, price, size and the aggressor side.
  3. Watch size, speed and where trades happen — a single large print proves little.
  4. One exchange's tape is one view of the market, not all of it.

Open BTC in the terminal — the Trades tab next to its order book is the live tape

Further reading

Education only, not financial advice · Updated 27 Oct 2026 · Data: Binance · Report a mistake