Volume delta and CVD: who was pushing the price

Volume delta: taker buys minus taker sells

Take any stretch of time — usually one candle. Add up the volume where the taker bought, and the volume where the taker sold. The difference is the volume delta:

delta = taker buy volume − taker sell volume

Positive delta: takers bought more than they sold. Negative: they sold more. Binance publishes the taker buy volume with every candle, so the taker sell volume is simply the total minus that. In the hour from 09:00 UTC on 2 October 2026, 1,441.3 BTC traded on BTC/USDT; takers bought 404.0 BTC and sold 1,037.3 BTC — a delta of −633.3 BTC.

A candle's colour is not its delta

That 09:00 candle, the heaviest net selling of the morning, was green: it opened at 86,236 and closed at 86,364. This is not rare. Of 6,000 hourly BTC/USDT candles from 19 February to 27 October 2026, 1,890 — 31.5% — had a colour opposite to their delta: red with positive delta, or green with negative.

The two measure different things. Colour compares the first and the last price of the hour. Delta counts who was aggressive during it. Heavy market selling can be met by large buy orders waiting in the book, so price need not fall. And price can rise with little aggressive buying: when sellers pull their asks and buyers raise their bids, even market sells end up trading at higher and higher prices.

CVD: delta added up

Cumulative volume delta — CVD — is a running total: start from zero and add each candle's delta. When CVD rises, takers bought more than they sold over that stretch; when it falls, they sold more. Build it yourself, candle by candle:

CVD builder — thirteen real hourly candles of BTC/USDT, 2 October 2026, 00:00–12:00 UTC, with each candle's taker buys, taker sells and delta. Starting from zero at 00:00, CVD reaches +518 BTC after the 04:00 breakout candle (delta +328 BTC). The 07:00 and 09:00 candles are green but have deltas of −329 and −633 BTC. At 12:00 price makes a new high, 87,220, on +268 BTC of delta — yet CVD stands at −565 BTC, far below its 04:00 level.

The starting value means nothing

CVD's number depends on where you start adding. Start at midnight and an hour can read +500; start a week earlier and the same hour can read −3,000. So read its direction and its turns, and compare them with price — never the level. Two apps that start at different times will show different numbers for the same market; the terminal starts its CVD at the first candle it loads.

Every market has its own CVD

Delta is counted per market. Binance BTC/USDT spot, BTC futures and other exchanges each have their own takers, and in the same hour their CVDs can point different ways. Everything in this module uses Binance BTC/USDT spot.

BTC/USDT, 2 October 2026, 00:00–12:59 UTC: price rose from 84,880 to 86,810 while CVD, counted from 00:00, ended at −565 BTC: over those hours, takers sold more than they bought while price rose.

Check yourself · 1 of 3An hourly candle: 1,441.3 BTC traded, of which takers bought 404.0 BTC. What is its delta?

A+404.0 BTCB−633.3 BTCC+1,037.3 BTC

Show the answer

Taker sells = 1,441.3 − 404.0 = 1,037.3 BTC, so delta = 404.0 − 1,037.3 = −633.3 BTC. This is the real 09:00 candle of 2 October 2026 — and it was green.

Check yourself · 2 of 3A red candle has a positive delta. What does that tell you?

AThe data must be wrong: a red candle always has negative deltaBTakers bought more than they sold, yet price ended lower — waiting sell orders took the buying, or bids were pulledCSellers were the aggressors in that hour

Show the answer

Colour and delta measure different things. Positive delta means market buys outweighed market sells; the price still fell, so the buying met enough waiting sell orders — or buyers pulled their bids. About a third of hourly BTC candles look like this, one way or the other.

Check yourself · 3 of 3Two apps show BTC CVD for the same hour: one reads +2,100, the other −400. What is the most likely reason?

AThey started adding delta at different times, or count different marketsBOne of them reverses buys and sellsCCVD is random, so the numbers mean nothing at all

Show the answer

CVD is a running total, so its level depends on where the count began and on which market is counted. The direction over the same hours is what you compare.

Takeaways

1. Delta = taker buy volume − taker sell volume: who was aggressive, not where price went.
2. About a third of hourly BTC candles have a colour opposite to their delta.
3. CVD adds delta up; read its direction against price, never its level.
4. Each exchange and market has its own CVD.

Open BTC in the terminal — CVD is the line under its price chart

Further reading

• Kline data with "taker buy base asset volume" — Binance Spot API docs ↗
• Cumulative Volume Delta — TradingView Help Center ↗