What is a Fair Value Gap (FVG) in crypto trading?
A Fair Value Gap is a price range the market skipped. Three candles print so fast that candle 1’s wick and candle 3’s wick never trade through the same prices. That empty band is the gap — the same pattern ICT traders mark by hand on Binance USDT-M futures.
The three-candle rule
Every textbook FVG is three consecutive candles. The middle one does the work — a displacement bar with a large body. The first and third candles define the boundaries:
| Type | Rule | Zone |
|---|---|---|
| Bullish FVG | Current low is strictly above the high of two candles ago | From that old high up to the current low |
| Bearish FVG | Current high is strictly below the low of two candles ago | From the current high up to that old low |
That is the same mechanical test this site uses. In code it is low[i] > high[i-2] for a bullish gap and high[i] < low[i-2] for a bearish gap. Gaps smaller than 0.01% of price are discarded so dust on a 5-minute SOL chart does not clutter the drawing.
Why traders care — and why they get hurt
The ICT story is that large orders pushed price through a range without filling every level, so the market may later return to “rebalance.” On BTC/USDT 15m and 1h charts you will see that happen often enough to make the zone useful as a map — support after a bullish gap, resistance after a bearish one.
It is not a fill-or-bust law. A 4h trend on Bitcoin can leave 15m gaps untouched for days. Using an FVG as a guaranteed bounce is how people fade a displacement they should have respected. The zone is an area of interest: entries, partials, or invalidation — not a signal by itself.
How this detector marks FVGs
The chart analyzer pulls Binance USDT-M klines for the pair and timeframe you pick, then walks the last stretch of candles with the rule above. Bullish gaps draw green, bearish gaps draw red. A live WebSocket keeps the last candle updating so a gap that forms on the close appears without a refresh.
When a bullish gap and a bearish gap overlap in price and sit close in time, the overlap is a Balanced Price Range (BPR) — usually a tighter, more respected band than either FVG alone. The market scanner hunts those overlaps across the USDT universe.
Open the live FVG chart on BTC/USDT 4hFree · Binance USDT-M · no TradingView accountWhich timeframe to start on
- 4h and 1d — fewer gaps, wider zones, useful as higher-timeframe context for BTC and ETH.
- 15m and 1h — where most discretionary futures traders actually execute.
- 5m — noisy on alts. Filter by size or wait for a BPR instead of every micro-gap.
This page is education, not trade advice. A gap on a chart is not a recommendation to buy or sell.
Fair Value Gap FAQ
Is an FVG the same as a regular session gap?
No. A weekend gap is an auction that never printed between Friday and Sunday. An FVG is an intraday three-candle inefficiency; the market was open, it just moved too fast to trade the middle.
Do I need TradingView?
No. This detector runs in the browser on Binance futures data. Same three-candle definition, plus BPR overlap that most simple FVG indicators skip.
Where do I scan every pair at once?
Use the Binance FVG / BPR scanner, then jump from a symbol into the live chart.