What absorption is
Binance futures · BTCUSDT · FlowMap Chart
You see buys hitting a price. The price does not go up. That is absorption.
A market buy has to trade with sell limits already sitting. If they keep buying that price and it does not trade higher, those sell limits ate the buys. The candle can look like nothing. The hits were real.
This note is that picture. The same thing happens the other way, when sells hit a bid and the price does not drop. Naming those two sides on the chart is a later note. What price does after that — turn, go through, or chop — is another note. The reversal drill is in Learn. This page stops at what you are looking at.
A hit means it traded
Size sitting on the book is not a hit. A bright band is limits waiting. Nobody has traded them yet.
A hit is a market order that already traded. On the chart the circles are those hits. Green is a market buy. Red is a market sell.
Absorption is a stack of those circles on one price, and the price does not leave.
Four buys, price stays
Say BTC is offered at 84,000. Four market buys hit that price. These numbers are an example, not a live print.
| Hit | Size (BTC) | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Market buy | 1.2 | 84,000 |
| 2 | Market buy | 0.8 | 84,000 |
| 3 | Market buy | 2.0 | 84,000 |
| 4 | Market buy | 0.4 | 84,000 |
1.2 + 0.8 + 2.0 + 0.4 = 4.4 BTC bought. The high is still 84,000. Price did not print higher. The sell limits at 84,000 took every one of those buys.
A one-minute candle of that stretch can be a small bar with 4.4 BTC of volume. The bar does not show four hits stuck on one price. The circles do. What a candle keeps, and what it drops, is in what BTCUSDT candles don’t show.
How absorption works
Sell limits are already sitting at a price. A market buy cannot pick a new price. It has to trade with those limits.
If enough size is still sitting, the next buy fills at the same price. Price does not print higher. The buys showed up. The offer ate them.
Three things are there at once. Hits on one side. Size waiting on the other. Waiting size big enough that the price stays.
Market sells into a bid work the same way. The bid is sitting. The sells trade with it. If the bid is still there, the next sell fills at the same price. Price does not print lower.
Nothing here says the level will hold after that. It only says what just happened.
When it is just a trade
Price lifts through the offer. That is not absorption. The buys found the end of the size, and the next print is higher. 84,000, then 84,050, is a break. The hits pushed the price.
A bright band that pulls, and nobody trades it, is not absorption either. The size left. There was no hit. The heat can change with no circle at all.
On FlowMap Chart
You do not need a separate footprint, a separate depth ladder, and a separate CVD. On BTCUSDT those three are already one chart.
The circles are the hits. A footprint puts that size in a cluster at a price. Here the cluster is the stack of circles. Circles on one price, and the price does not leave, is the stall.
The heat is the size that was sitting, kept over time. A depth ladder shows the book right now. The heat shows that waiting size as time moves. Circles into a bright band, and the price still there, means the sitting size took the hits.
COB (the current order book) is the ladder on the right. Bids and asks standing at this moment. The heat is the history of that. The ladder is now.
CVD (cumulative volume delta) is the line under the chart. It adds market buys and subtracts market sells across the window. Buyers hitting, the line rising, and the price not lifting, is the same story as the circles, added up. Sellers hitting, the line falling, and the price not dropping, is the other side. The sum on its own is in what CVD adds up.
ABS is the mark on that price. Hits landed, and the price did not go through. The circles, the heat, and the line are how you see it. The mark is the chart naming that spot.
What this picture is not
Not a setup. Not a fade. Not a reason to follow the hits. Not every Bitcoin exchange. This is Binance futures BTCUSDT. ETH and BNB use the same marks, with their own size.
The chart is not saying the level will hold. It is not saying the price will turn.
For learning only — not financial advice.
The reversal drill is in Learn. Watch it on FlowMap Chart · BTCUSDT. The book next to it is on Desk.