Market Structure and Trading Mechanics

Most sharp moves in crypto are not explained by news. They are explained by plumbing: how much leverage sits in perpetual futures, where the liquidation prices cluster, what funding traders are paying each other, and how thin the order book is when a large market order arrives. This pillar collects the guides that explain that plumbing one mechanism at a time.

Each guide starts from the exchange or regulator documentation for the mechanism, shows the formula, and then runs a worked example with stated inputs so you can repeat the arithmetic on your own numbers. Open interest, funding rates, cross versus isolated margin and liquidation cascades are covered as a connected set, because a reader who understands one usually needs the other three to make sense of a move. Slippage and order types cover the cost of getting into and out of a position. Market cap versus fully diluted value and bitcoin dominance cover the headline numbers that dashboards repeat without context.

Nothing here is a signal. The sentiment and positioning metrics described in these guides describe what traders have already done; none of them tells you what the price will do next, and the guides say where each metric breaks down. If you are building a plan for regular purchases rather than trading, start with the dollar-cost averaging guide, then read the volatility guide before you decide how much drawdown you can actually sit through.