How to Read a Crypto Chart: A Beginner's Guide
A crypto chart looks busy at first, but it's only answering one question: what has price done over time? Learn five things, the pair, the candles, the timeframe, the volume and the trend, and you can read any chart on any exchange.
- Pair: what you're pricing, and in what (BTC/GBP is Bitcoin in pounds).
- Candles: each one shows the open, high, low and close for a period.
- Timeframe: how long each candle lasts. Start with daily and 4-hour.
- Volume: the bars at the bottom, showing how much was traded.
- Trend: higher highs and higher lows means up; lower highs and lower lows means down.
1. Check the trading pair
At the top of every chart you'll see something like BTC/GBP or ETH/USDT. The first coin is what you're looking at. The second is what the price is shown in. USDT and USDC are stablecoins designed to track the US dollar, so BTC/USDT is roughly Bitcoin's price in dollars. If you think in pounds, look for a GBP pair, or remember that the exchange rate moves too.
2. Read the candles
Each candle covers one period of time and shows four prices:
- Open: the price at the start of the period.
- Close: the price at the end.
- High and low: the top and bottom of the thin lines (wicks).
The thick part, the body, runs from the open to the close. Green (or white) means it closed higher than it opened. Red (or black) means it closed lower. Long wicks show where price tried to go and got pushed back. Crypto tends to have longer wicks than many markets because it can move fast.
Example: a 4-hour Ethereum candle opens at £2,000, spikes to £2,090, dips to £1,980 and closes at £2,050. It's green, the body is £50 tall, and the long upper wick shows sellers pushed price back down from £2,090.
3. Pick a timeframe
The timeframe sets how long each candle lasts, from 1 minute to 1 week. The same coin can look like it's rising on the daily chart and falling on the 15-minute chart. As a beginner, start on the daily and 4-hour charts. Crypto never closes, so most exchanges start each daily candle at midnight UTC. Our lesson on which timeframe to trade goes deeper.
4. Look at the volume
The bars along the bottom show how much was traded in each candle. A big move on high volume has lots of traders behind it. A big move on tiny volume is easier to reverse. Be aware that volume differs between exchanges, because each one only shows its own trades. More in why volume matters.
5. Find the trend
Zoom out and look at the swing highs and lows:
- Uptrend: each high is higher than the last, and each low is higher too.
- Downtrend: lower highs and lower lows.
- Range: price bouncing between roughly the same high and low.
Learn this properly in uptrend vs downtrend, our first free lesson.
6. Mark support and resistance
Look left for prices where the chart turned more than once. A floor where buyers keep stepping in is support. A ceiling where sellers keep appearing is resistance. Mark them as zones, not exact lines, because price rarely turns at the same penny. Round numbers like £50,000 on Bitcoin often act as levels too, because so many people watch them.
A 60-second checklist
- What pair, and what currency is it priced in?
- What timeframe am I on? Check the daily first.
- Is it trending up, down or sideways?
- Where are the nearest support and resistance zones?
- Is volume backing the latest move?
- If I traded this, where would my stop loss go? (See where to put your stop loss.)
Practise reading charts every day with the free daily chart challenge.
Questions people ask
What do the green and red candles mean on a crypto chart?
A green (or white) candle closed higher than it opened, so price rose in that period. A red (or black) candle closed lower than it opened. The thin lines above and below are wicks, showing the highest and lowest prices reached.
What timeframe should beginners use on crypto charts?
Start with the daily and 4-hour charts. They show the bigger picture and move slowly enough to think. Very short timeframes like the 1-minute are noisy and hard to read.
Why does crypto have no closing time?
Crypto trades 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Most exchanges start each daily candle at midnight UTC, so a daily candle is a 24-hour window rather than a trading session.
What does BTC/USDT mean?
It's a trading pair: the price of one Bitcoin (BTC) shown in Tether (USDT), a stablecoin designed to track the US dollar. BTC/GBP would show the price in pounds.
Read next
Learn it properly, for free
Ten short lessons on charts, stop losses and risk, with a quiz after each one and a certificate at the end. Built for crypto, and it works on forex and gold too.
Want more? Founding VIP adds 40 in-depth lessons, with a new one every week and a new feature every month.
Educational content only. Not financial advice. Trading crypto, forex and gold is high risk and you can lose all the money you put in.