MarketTrace — Research, post-mortems, and engineering notes.

What an MCP server is, how the Model Context Protocol works, MCP vs API, which AI apps speak it, and what a live market-data server changes for traders.

The Clarity Act failed and the Fed hiked for the first time since 2023. Bitcoin went on to $81K anyway. Open interest in coins shows who built it.

Long buildup, short covering, long unwinding: we tested the open interest playbook on 136,000 hours of Binance BTC, ETH and SOL data. Direction: no. Volatility: yes.

Bitcoin ran from $64.5K to $79.6K in 45 hours. We replay it in consolidated order flow: $2.2B of taker buys in 30 minutes, $1.09B of shorts liquidated.

Bookmap's free Digital tier gives real-time crypto for one instrument. The footprint chart is Global Plus only, at $79 to $99 a month.

TradingView's Volume Footprint needs Premium or Ultimate. What that buys: second-resolution intrabars, inferred buy/sell, one venue's tape.

Sierra Chart's own engineering account says Numbers Bars cannot be used accurately with Binance data, and the mechanism is Sierra's own volume field.

TradingLite is closed and its technology is for sale. What its own site and status page show, and where browser-based order-flow users can go now.

Every real way to get a free volume profile: TradingView plans, thinkorswim, NinjaTrader, GoCharting, Webull, and a free cross-exchange BTC perp profile.

We detected 4,827 fair value gaps across 826 days of Bitcoin data and measured fill rates, time to fill, and whether FVGs beat random price levels.

We detected 2,142 order blocks across 826 days of Bitcoin data and measured retest rates, hold rates, and whether the zones beat random rectangles.

A liquidity grab is a real microstructure event, not a conspiracy against your stop. We show what the cross-exchange liquidation tape actually reveals on BTC and ETH.

A fake wall is a real thing with a real name: spoofing. We show how to tell a spoof from genuine absorption using order-book imbalance and CVD, not vibes.

US strikes on Iran, gas back at $4, Brent near $90. BTC just closed above $66K for the first time in a month. What the cross-exchange tape actually shows.

Five ways to short crypto, what each costs, and what the data says about squeezes. With a live example: shorting bitcoin into the June 2026 FOMC meeting.

The Fed held rates, raised the dot plot and dropped forward guidance. A month later BTC funding sits mid-range and open interest is flat. The tape, read.

We measured forward returns after extreme funding percentiles on BTC, ETH, SOL, BNB, XRP and DOGE: 789 days, three venues. Two popular beliefs fail the test.

Four VWAP trading strategies adapted to 24/7 crypto perps: the pullback, the reclaim, band fades, and anchored VWAP from events. With order-flow checks.

Trump's 2025 crypto income hit $1.4 billion while $TRUMP holders lost $3.81 billion, and BTC perpetual funding now sits at its two-year median, 0.65 bps per 8h. Twenty months of the 'crypto president' trade, read through funding, open interest, and liquidations.

What a crypto MCP server is, how to connect one to ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, and an honest list of free servers for prices, news, onchain and perps data.

How to read a volume profile: POC, value area, HVN/LVN, and three strategies adapted for 24/7 crypto perps. BTC examples, honest caveats.

What order flow trading is and how to read it in crypto perps: footprints, CVD, order book imbalance and absorption across Binance, Bybit, OKX and Hyperliquid.

Coinbase and Kalshi brought CFTC-regulated perpetual futures to US traders. What onshore perps actually change for funding, CVD, and the cross-exchange liquidation map.

Bitcoin held through the Iran war and the Trump–Xi summit, then slid 22% below $60,000 on no new catastrophe, and bounced just 3% when Trump declared the war over. The crash was a leverage unwind, and the microstructure data shows it maturing. Here's the tape.

How the footprint chart was invented, who owns the trademark, why it almost died with MarketDelta in 2018, and what it shows about order flow on modern crypto perps.

Bitcoin dominance sits at 58–60% in May 2026. ~15% of BTC supply is held in ETFs, corporate treasuries, and governments. 11.9 million tokens launched on pump.fun. The broad altcoin rally that defined 2018 and 2021 is structurally over. Here is the data.

Crypto liquidation cascades have wiped out tens of billions of dollars across a handful of single-day events. The pattern repeats: stretched funding, crowded longs, a catalyst, a flush, a reversal. Here is the chronological record with the numbers.

A liquidation heatmap shows where leveraged positions are likely to fail. Reading it well means understanding what it is not (a price target) and what it actually is: a map of forced liquidity that gets eaten when price arrives.

During the May 13-15 2026 Trump-Xi summit, BTC sold off twice and bottomed within $100 of the same level ($78,730 and $78,632). The news cycle blamed Xi's Taiwan warning and the summit's anticlimactic close. Order flow tells a different story: both cascades started within 30 minutes of NYSE cash open, alongside SPY, QQQ, gold, and oil.

Cumulative Volume Delta shows real buying and selling pressure on crypto perpetual futures. The math, the divergence cheat sheet, common traps, and how to read it on Binance, Bybit, OKX, and Hyperliquid.

Three indicators traders watch on crypto perpetual futures: long/short ratio, order book imbalance, cumulative volume delta. What each measures, when they agree, and the setups they create when they disagree.

Binance perpetual futures liquidations across BTC, ETH, SOL, BNB, XRP, DOGE over two weeks. Shorts financed 59% of the $715M wrecked. ETH printed the biggest single-minute cascades. DOGE was the only asset where longs paid more than shorts. Cross-exchange feeds: 24h preview.

Across nine US election cycles since 2008, BTC moved on macro and event collapse, not party color. The clearest direct election effect arrived in 2024. Here is the 7-cycle data.

90% of crypto trading bots lose money, but the failure modes are predictable. A forensic breakdown of 7 strategy-killers, with code-level fixes. Sourced 2026 data.

Funding, dynamic settlement, mark spread, ADL, dust — the costs that don't show on the order ticket. Real numbers from a $10K perpetual position on Binance, Bybit and OKX.

13 April 2024: Iran strikes Israel, BTC drops 5.5%. 13 April 2026: the US blockades Hormuz, BTC rallies 5.75%. Same date, bigger event, opposite reaction. Here's the data.

Negative funding rate explained: how it works, what a $10K short actually pays, and what 2 years of Binance perpetual data show about forward returns.

Over 25 days BTC ran +15.66% into a local high at $79,382. The median funding rate was −0.19%. Short positions financed the move the entire way up.