Whales and trades
- Whale
- A trader who moves unusually large sums. On CoinLobster a crypto whale trade is one big for its coin: $500,000 for Bitcoin, $1,000,000 for Ethereum, and for every other coin 0.05% of a typical day's volume, from $25,000 up to $400,000 for top majors.
- Whale trade (whale print)
- One executed buy or sell big enough to stand out. Unlike a wallet transfer, it has a direction, a price and an exchange.
- Whale alert
- A notification sent when a whale trade executes, so you see it as it happens.
- On-chain whale
- A large DEX swap. CoinLobster tracks big Uniswap swaps on Ethereum, Base and Arbitrum ($250,000+ free; with Pro, $25,000+ on Base and Arbitrum and $100,000+ on Ethereum) and tags wallets that swap big again and again.
- Print cluster (velocity)
- A burst of large trades ("prints") well above a coin’s normal pace. Several in one direction suggest more than one trader positioning that way.
- Smart money
- Well-informed traders such as whales, corporate insiders and funds, whose trades often come before a price move.
- Accumulation
- Buying that builds a position over time, often seen as repeated on-chain buys. The opposite of distribution.
- Distribution
- Selling into strength as larger holders reduce a position. Clustered large sells after a run can be a sign of it.
- Breadth
- Whether a move shows up on many exchanges and on-chain at once. Broad buying or selling is harder to fake than one large trade.
- Net flow
- Buy volume minus sell volume over a window. Positive means net buying; negative means net selling.
Order books
- Order book
- The live list of buy orders (bids) and sell orders (asks) for an asset, by price.
- Combined order book
- One order book merged from many exchanges (18 on CoinLobster), showing the total liquidity at each price.
- Buy wall / sell wall
- Many buy or sell orders stacked at one price. A buy wall can act as support and a sell wall as resistance until absorbed.
- Market depth
- How much money sits in orders near the current price. Deep markets absorb large trades; thin ones move sharply on the same amount.
Leverage and derivatives
- Perpetual (perp)
- A futures contract with no expiry date, kept near spot by the funding rate. Most crypto leverage trades on perpetuals.
- Funding rate
- A periodic payment between longs and shorts on a perpetual future, keeping its price near spot. Positive means longs pay shorts: longs are crowded.
- Open interest (OI)
- The total value of futures contracts currently open. Rising open interest with a rising price means new money is entering.
- Liquidation
- The forced close of a leveraged position that can no longer meet margin. Clustered liquidations can cascade and speed up a move.
- Liquidation heatmap
- A map of the prices where leveraged positions would be force-closed. It is a model, not a record. Traders watch the big clusters because reaching one sets off forced trades.
- Liquidation cascade
- Forced closes push the price further, which forces more closes. It is why crypto can move violently in minutes with no news. Perpetuals liquidations and DeFi lending liquidations are different events and are never summed.
- Squeeze
- Crowded leverage forced to unwind. Short squeeze: shorts buy back into a rise. Long squeeze: longs sell into a fall. It accelerates a move rather than starting it.
- Spot vs futures
- Spot is the coin itself; futures are leveraged contracts on its price. When they pull apart, leveraged traders disagree with buyers of the coin.
Markets and data
- CEX (centralized exchange)
- An exchange such as Binance, Coinbase or Kraken that holds user funds and matches orders on its own order book.
- DEX (decentralized exchange)
- An on-chain exchange such as Uniswap, where trades settle through smart contracts. Every swap is public on the blockchain.
- OHLC
- Open, high, low and close prices for a period. The basis of candlestick charts.
- Sentiment score
- A number from -100 (very bearish) to +100 (very bullish) summarizing the news flow and positioning for an asset.
Stocks
- Insider buy (Form 4)
- An officer or director buying their company's stock on the open market, filed on SEC Form 4. It is their own cash, unlike a granted option.
- Congressional trading
- Stock trades by members of the US Congress, disclosed under the STOCK Act. The traders may have access to policy information before the public.
