Crypto SMC Overview: Structure, Zones and Liquidity for Any USDT Pair

A swing high on these pages is a daily candle whose high is above the highs of the five candles before it and not below the five after it; a swing low the same way with lows. It is only known five days later. A break of structure is a daily close above the newest unbroken swing high (or below the newest swing low): a BOS when it goes with the trend, a CHoCH (change of character) when it is the first break against it.

• Trend - the direction of the last break of structure.
• Zones - open order blocks (solid outline), fair value gaps (dashed) and breaker blocks (faint), green for bullish and red for bearish. The chart draws the four nearest to price; the Open zones table lists them all.
• Liquidity - swing highs (BSL, buy-side) and lows (SSL, sell-side) that no candle has traded past since, plus the previous week's and month's high and low. On crypto a week is Monday to Sunday IST.
• Dealing range - the newest swing high and swing low. Above its 50% line (equilibrium) is premium, below it discount; outside it the card says Above range or Below range.
• Today - any gap, block, breaker, sweep or setup on the day shown.

Unlike the scan pages, the Overview has no liquidity filter: it draws any live pair on any day, including a quiet Sunday when the scan lists leave the pair out.

BTCUSDT closed the IST day of Sunday 8 November at 75,908.65. The daily overview read:

• Trend: bearish. The last break was a BOS on 30 October, a close of 76,918.91 below the 79,220.74 swing low of 24 October. Before it: a bearish CHoCH on 8 October, after a bullish one on 21 September.
• Dealing range: below range. The newest confirmed swings are 79,220.74 (24 October) and 81,971 (29 October), equilibrium 80,595.87, and the close is far under both. The 6 November low of 74,888 is not a swing yet: a swing needs five days after it, and it has two. Until then the range card lags the chart.
• Open zones: 6 FVG, 5 OB, 0 BB. The close sits inside a bullish order block, 74,967.97 to 76,950.96, left by the 16 September candle before the 21 September CHoCH. It also sits inside an old bullish gap, 72,966 to 76,500, traded into on 14 days since 22 August and never filled. Above are a fresh bearish block, 80,397.14 to 81,823 (28 October), and a bearish gap at 83,606.01 to 85,136.11.
• Untaken liquidity: buy-side at 81,971, 84,898, 87,220 and 87,395.67 (the 22 September high); sell-side far below at 62,275 and 62,535.24. The previous week's and the previous month's low are both 76,325.98, set on 31 October.
• Today: only a previous-day sweep: the low of 75,571.08 went under Saturday's 75,600.82 and the close came back above it.

On daily candles, then, BTCUSDT is in a downtrend that has run into an old bullish block, with a fresh bearish block overhead. A long idea would want that block to hold on daily closes and a break back above structure; a short idea would want a rally into the bearish block first.

The same pair on weekly candles

• Trend: bullish. A weekly CHoCH in the week to 27 September, above the 82,850 weekly swing high of May.
• Dealing range: premium. 57,800.19 (the week to 5 July) to 87,395.67 (the week to 27 September), equilibrium 72,597.93; the close sits 61.2% of the way up.
• Zones and liquidity: an open weekly bullish gap from 65,474.46 to 76,670.01; untaken weekly highs at 87,395.67, 97,924.49 and the October 2025 high of 126,199.63.

The weekly chart says the bigger move since July is still up and that the daily fall is, so far, a pullback inside it. The daily chart says the pullback has not stopped. Both are true at once, and the next section turns that into an order of reading.

1. Open the pair on Weekly first. Note the trend, where the close sits in the weekly range, and the nearest untaken weekly high and low. For BTCUSDT on 8 November: up, in premium, with 87,395.67 overhead.
2. Switch to Daily. Read the daily trend against the weekly. A daily trend that disagrees is a pullback until the weekly structure turns too; a daily trend that agrees is the cleaner case.
3. Find the zone price is in, or nearest to. Is it a bullish zone in discount, or a bearish zone in premium? BTCUSDT sat in a bullish daily block while the daily trend was down: a zone worth watching, not yet a reason.
4. Mark liquidity both ways. The nearest untaken high above (81,971) is a natural first target for a long idea; the block's far side (74,967.97) is where that idea is wrong. Compare the two distances before anything else.
5. Check the futures market. Smart Money pages read spot candles only. Open interest and funding on the Binance Futures page show whether a move was new positions or forced closing.

Risk per trade - risk a small, fixed share of capital on any one idea. Crypto never closes, so a stop is the only exit while you sleep; with leverage, keep the liquidation price well beyond the stop. When selling options, prefer defined-risk structures (spreads, iron condors) over naked positions.

These are ideas to study, paper-trade and backtest, not recommendations or signals, and not a promise of any result. Every condition below can fail. Crypto trades around the clock and can move sharply at any hour; leverage and options can lose more than you expect, and past behaviour says nothing certain about the next session. Size, entries, exits and risk are your own decisions.

1. Weekly trend, daily zone

• Setup: a bullish weekly trend, and on daily candles price in discount at a bullish block or gap.
• Trigger idea: a daily bullish break (BOS or CHoCH) out of the zone, not the touch itself.
• Invalidation: a daily close through the zone's far side.

2. Liquidity as the target

• Idea: the nearest untaken high above a long idea is the first target, the nearest untaken low below a short idea likewise.
• Check: reward to that level against risk to the zone's edge; skip ideas where the target is closer than the stop.

3. Wait for the CHoCH against a downtrend

• Setup: a bearish daily trend, price at a bullish zone, and a sweep of a low (like BTCUSDT's sweep of the October low on 4 November).
• Idea: act only after a daily close above the newest swing high turns the structure; until then, the trend card says down.

4. Read a scan row in context

A row on Order Blocks or Fair Value Gaps is one fact. The Overview shows whether it sits with the trend, in the right half of the range, with room to the next liquidity.

Test before you trade - write the rules down exactly, test them on past data (see how to backtest an options strategy and the Option Simulator, which supports crypto), then paper-trade at least 20 occurrences before committing real money. Keep a journal of every trade, including the ones you skipped.

Every Smart Money page has a Candles setting: Daily (the default) or Weekly. Weekly runs exactly the same rules on weekly candles built from the same IST daily bars. On crypto:

• A week is Monday 00:00 to Sunday 23:59 IST, seven daily candles: Monday's open, the week's high and low, Sunday's close, the volume added up.
• The current week is the week so far. Its candle is dated the newest day, so on a Monday it is a one-day candle; a weekly row seen mid-week can change, or drop off, by Sunday's close.
• Dates in a weekly row are the week's last day: a Sunday, or the newest day for the current week.
• Counts become weeks: a swing needs five weeks on each side, ATR 14 is fourteen weeks, and every look-back counts weeks.
• What stays daily: the liquidity filter (the newest day's turnover and volume), LTP and change, and the Vol Ratio column.
• History: the scan pages build weeks from about 400 days of daily bars, so a weekly swing or zone there is at most about a year old. The SMC Overview reads up to about three years where the archive has them (158 weeks for BTCUSDT).

A weekly idea for the Overview: read Weekly first and let it choose the side, as in the BTCUSDT example. A weekly overview on crypto covers far more history than a scan page can (158 weeks for BTCUSDT against about 57 on the scans), so it is also the place to see old weekly blocks and gaps, such as BTCUSDT's untouched bearish block at 90,128.44 to 97,924.49 from January 2026.

The cards

• Trend - Bullish or Bearish, from the last break of structure.
• Last break - BOS or CHoCH, its direction, level and date.
• Dealing range - Premium, Discount, Above range or Below range, with the close's position as a percentage of the range (below 0% or above 100% when outside it).
• Open zones - how many gaps (FVG), order blocks (OB) and breakers (BB) are still open.
• Untaken liquidity - how many swing highs and lows no candle has traded past.

The tables

• Today - the day's Smart Money events for this pair.
• Breaks of structure - the last eight, newest first.
• Open zones - every open gap, block and breaker with its edges and date.
• Liquidity - untaken swing levels and the previous week's and month's high and low.

Pick any live USDT pair in the Pair box; there are no indices on the crypto side. Signed in, the Session date box shows the overview as it stood at the close of any past IST day your plan includes, and Latest returns to the newest day.

Which pairs are scanned

• The live USDT pairs in Unfluke's crypto archive, from BTCUSDT and ETHUSDT to mid-caps such as GRTUSDT and THETAUSDT: 33 were scanned on 8 November 2026.
• Stablecoins are left out by behaviour: a pair whose average daily range over 20 days is under 0.25% (USDCUSDT's is a few hundredths of a percent) is not scanned. A day with under US$100,000 traded is skipped as untraded.
• The liquidity filter: a 20-day average turnover above US$500,000, and the day's volume above 0.8 times its 20-day average. Crypto has no price bands, so there is no circuit check.
• The universe box: All, Futures or Options (pairs that also have a perpetual future, or options, in the archive).

Three things that are different on crypto

• A day is an IST day. Each daily candle runs from 00:00 to 23:59 IST, rolled up from the one-minute spot archive (Binance data). Another chart that closes its days at 00:00 UTC (05:30 IST) will show different candles, and so different swings and zones.
• Weekends thin the lists. The 0.8 × volume test is the same as on NSE, but crypto trades every day and volume falls away at weekends. From 10 August to 8 November 2026 an average of 21.2 pairs passed on a weekday and 10.8 on a Saturday or Sunday; BTCUSDT itself was off the lists on 27 of 89 days, 21 of them weekends. On Sunday 8 November no pair passed and every list was empty. The SMC Overview has no liquidity filter, so a pair's zones are always there.
• Missing days. The archive has no candle for 5 August, 11 September or 5 November 2026, when the feed stopped. The candles on either side sit next to each other, and a swing count of "five days" can span six calendar days there.

The newest day can also be unfinished: the feed runs about a day behind, and the newest stored day is topped up until it is complete, so its volume, and with it the liquidity test, can change during the day.

Smart Money Concepts are a way of reading a chart, popularised by the trader known as ICT. There is no official rulebook and no published evidence that they work better than other methods, on crypto or anywhere else; the pages apply one fixed reading so a row can be checked by hand. They describe what price did, not what it will do.

Open the page at Smart Money → SMC Overview (switch the market to Crypto), or sign up free to open the Market Terminal.

The other crypto Smart Money guides: Fair Value Gaps, Order Blocks, Breaker Blocks, Liquidity Sweeps. The NSE version of this page, with its own worked examples, is explained in the SMC Overview guide. For what traders were doing in the futures market on the same days, see the OI Buildup guide and the Binance Futures guide.