Crypto SMC Setups: Liquidity Sweep, Break of Structure, Back to the Gap

For a bullish setup the page needs four things, in order (a bearish setup is the mirror image):

1. Sweep - a day whose low went under an untaken swing low, the previous week's low or the previous month's low, and closed back above it. A sweep of only the previous day's low does not count.
2. Break - within ten days after the sweep, a close above the newest unbroken swing high: a BOS if the trend was already up, a CHoCH if it turns it. The break must be in the last ten days.
3. Zone - an unfilled bullish fair value gap formed between the sweep and two days after the break; if there is none, the break's order block, if it is still intact.
4. Return - In Zone when price trades back into the zone on the day shown; Waiting until then.

The score, out of 5:

• +2 the sweep and the break (always).
• +1 the zone is a fair value gap, not only the order block.
• +1 the zone sits in the discount half of the move (below the 50% line from the swept low to the high since); for a bearish setup, the premium half.
• +1 the break came on at least 1.5 times its 20-day average volume.

The setup is dropped once a close goes back beyond the swept extreme: below the sweep's low for a bullish setup, above the sweep's high for a bearish one. On crypto, "the previous week" is Monday to Sunday in IST and "the previous month" is the calendar month, so a sweep of last week's high can happen on any day, Sunday included.

How these examples were made: the page's newest day for visitors who are not signed in was Sunday 8 November 2026, which listed no pairs (see "Weekends" below), and past dates need a free sign-in. So the rows here come from running the page's own rules (the same backend functions) on Binance spot candles grouped into IST days, the source of Unfluke's crypto archive. The page's own numbers can differ slightly where its minute archive has a gap.

BNBUSDT: bearish, 5 out of 5

• Sweep, 27 October. The high reached 754.29, above the untaken 751.86 swing high of 21 October, and the day closed back at 749.85: buy-side liquidity taken.
• Higher wicks, no higher close. On 28 and 29 October the highs went further, to 762.20 and 761.00, but the closes (749.35 and 744.07) stayed below 754.29. The page keeps the first sweep, and only a close above its high would cancel the setup.
• Break, 30 October. BNB closed at 698.65, down 6.1%, under the 705.86 swing low of 19 October: a bearish BOS (the trend was already down), on 5.7 times its average volume. That was the day most of the crypto market fell.
• Zone. 29 October's low (738.30) and 31 October's high (710.83) left a bearish fair value gap from 710.83 to 738.30. On 30 October itself the row scored 4/5 with the order block as its zone; the gap exists only once the 31 October candle closes, and from then the score was 5/5.
• Premium. The leg ran from 754.29 down to 680.00 (30 October's low, a round number); its 50% line is 717.14. The gap's middle, 724.57, is above it: the premium half, the side SMC prefers for a short.
• Status. Waiting on 31 October; price first came back into the gap on 1 and 2 November (highs 717.75 and 716.00), but BNB's volume on those days was 0.65 to 0.78 times its average, under the liquidity gate, so the row was not shown. A visitor first saw it In Zone on 4 November (high 721.59, close 718.39), and again on 5 November (high 723.42, close 693.25).

What followed, through 8 November: no close above 754.29, so the setup stayed valid, and BNB closed at 697.55. Price did not reach the leg's low of 680.00 (the lowest was 683.94 on 6 November). An entry from inside the zone was ahead; the first target had not been hit. And from 6 November the row was no longer on the page: BNB's volume that Friday was 0.78 times its average, just under the 0.8 gate, and 0.33 times on Saturday.

UNIUSDT: bullish, 4 out of 5, and a very wide zone

• Sweep, 30 October. On the sell-off day UNI's low reached 6.254, under its 6.52 swing low, and closed back at 6.876.
• Break, 4 November. A close of 7.654 (up 5%) above the 7.52 swing high of 29 October, on 1.54 times average volume: a bullish CHoCH, because UNI's trend had been down.
• Zone. The move left no fair value gap, so the zone is the order block: the 30 October candle itself, 6.25 to 7.22. Score 4/5: sweep and break, discount, heavy break; no gap point.
• Status. Waiting on 4 November; In Zone on 5 November, when a spike to 7.82 reversed to a close of 6.841, and on 6 November (close 6.921).

The UNI row shows the weakness of an order-block zone on a volatile coin: the 30 October candle spans almost the whole leg, so "in the zone" says little, and the risk to below the swept low (6.254) is about 10% from a 6.92 entry. Like BNB, the row left the page on 7 and 8 November (volume 0.40 and 0.45 times its average), while the setup itself was still alive.

1. Start from In Zone rows with a high score. 4 or 5 out of 5, and a fair value gap rather than a wide order block where you can choose.
2. Measure the risk first. The setup's own invalidation is a close beyond the swept extreme (754.29 for BNB, 6.254 for UNI). If that is 10% away and you trade with leverage, the position has to be small; check that your liquidation price is well beyond it.
3. Ask for a reaction. A close back out of the zone in the setup's direction (for BNB, a lower close after the 4 November test) is the minimum. The Market Structure page shows whether the pair has broken again.
4. Take targets from the leg and from liquidity. The leg's far end (680.00 for BNB) is the first; untaken equal lows or highs beyond it, on the Equal Highs & Lows page, the next.
5. Write the levels down. Because the liquidity gate can hide the row on a quiet day, keep the zone, the swept extreme and the leg's end in your own notes rather than relying on the list to show them tomorrow.
6. Check BTC. Most coins break with Bitcoin. A bullish alt setup while BTC is making a bearish break is a trade against the market's main driver.

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. In the zone, high score, with BTC

• Setup: In Zone, score 4 or 5, in the same direction as BTC's last break of structure.
• Entry idea: a daily close back out of the zone in the setup's direction.
• Invalidation: a close beyond the swept extreme (the page drops the setup there anyway).
• Target idea: the leg's far end, then the next untaken equal level.

2. Waiting: alerts, not orders

• Setup: a Waiting row with a fair value gap zone.
• Idea: set an alert at the near edge of the gap and decide only when price gets there. A setup that runs away without returning is a missed trade, not a reason to chase.

3. Gap over block

• Setup: compare 5/5 rows with fair value gaps against 4/5 rows whose zone is an order block, as BNB and UNI were.
• Idea: test whether the narrower gap zones give better reward for the risk on your pairs. On fast-moving coins a single order-block candle can be as wide as the move.

4. Weekly setups as the backdrop

• Setup: a weekly setup In Zone (see the weekly example below), then a daily setup in the same direction inside the weekly zone.
• Idea: two timeframes telling the same story, with the daily one setting the risk.

How to test these

Step back through past weekdays with the session date, record each In Zone row with its swept extreme, leg end and score, and count how often price reached the leg's end before a close beyond the swept extreme. Keep the score bands that held up.

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.

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 the same rules on weekly candles built from the same daily bars.

• A crypto week is Monday to Sunday in IST: the open of Monday 00:00, the week's high and low, the close of Sunday 23:59, with volume added up. Every date in a weekly row is that week's Sunday.
• The current week is the week so far. On a Monday its candle is one day old, so a weekly row seen mid-week can change, or drop off, by Sunday's close.
• 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 gate (the day's turnover and volume), the last price and change.

A weekly idea for setups: on Weekly the sweep, the break (within ten weeks of the sweep) and the zone are all weekly, so a setup there can take months to play out. Applying the page's rules to Binance weekly candles on 6 November 2026, SOLUSDT showed a weekly bullish 5/5 In Zone: a sweep of the previous week's low (74.63) in the week to 23 August, a weekly CHoCH above 98.41 the next week on 1.56 times average volume, and a gap from 77.84 to 93.26 that price was trading in, while SOL's daily trend was bearish. Use the weekly zone as the area of interest and a daily bullish break inside it for timing.

• Tabs - All (every live setup whose break is in the last ten days), Bullish · In Zone, Bearish · In Zone, Bullish · Waiting, Bearish · Waiting.
• Order - highest score first, In Zone before Waiting, then the newest break.
• Columns - Symbol (the USDT pair) and LTP; Direction; Score; Sweep (date) and Swept Level; Break (BOS or CHoCH) and its date; Zone (FVG or OB) with Zone Low and Zone High; Status; Chart, which draws the sweep, the break, the zone and the 50% line.
• Controls - Candles (Daily or Weekly), Universe (All, Futures, Options) and the session date.

The daily candles are rolled up from Unfluke's one-minute spot archive (Binance data) into IST days, 00:00 to 23:59. A "session" on these pages is one such day; crypto has no weekends or holidays, so ten sessions are ten calendar days.

• Which pairs. The live USDT pairs, about 33 on 8 November 2026, with stablecoins left out. The Universe box narrows them to the pairs with a perpetual future (Futures) or with options (Options) in the archive.
• The liquidity gate. A pair is listed only when its 20-day average turnover is above $500,000 and the day's volume is above 0.8 times its 20-day average. There is no circuit rule; crypto has no price bands.
• Weekends. Crypto volume drops on Saturdays and Sundays, and the 0.8× test is made against the average of the 20 days before, most of them weekdays. Applying the gate to Binance candles for 30 pairs: 29 passed on Friday 30 October, 26 on Thursday 5 November, but only 1 on Saturday 7 November and 1 on Sunday 8 November (BTC's volume that Sunday was 0.35 times its average). A row that disappears at the weekend has usually not failed; it is just not shown. Read these pages on a weekday close, or pick one with the session date.
• The newest day can be unfinished. The daily bars are topped up during the day, so the newest day's high, low and volume are partial until 23:59 IST.
• History. The scan pages read about 400 days of daily bars, so a weekly row can rest on at most about 57 weeks. Swings are five days each side (three on Equal Highs & Lows), ATR is 14 days, and zones and swings are followed for 120 days: about four months, not the six months the same 120 sessions span on NSE.
• One exchange, spot only. A wick on one venue may not exist on another, and liquidations happen in perpetual futures, whose volume is often several times spot volume and is not counted here.
• Visitors. Without signing in you see the newest day on daily candles; past dates and the Weekly setting need a free account.

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; 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 Setups (switch the market to Crypto), or sign up free to open the Market Terminal. The NSE version, with the full list of columns, is explained in the SMC Setups guide.

The other crypto Smart Money guides: SMT Divergence, Market Structure, Retracement / OTE, Equal Highs & Lows. The building blocks (fair value gaps, order blocks and liquidity sweeps) are explained in the Fair Value Gaps, Order Blocks and Liquidity Sweeps guides.