Daily Volume reports how much changed hands each day and places it against what this market has lately been doing. It is the plainest measure of participation on the dashboard, and the one most of the other views are built on top of.

The comparison is what makes it readable. A bare figure means very little in a market that has grown by orders of magnitude, so the only useful question is whether a day was busy for now.

What it actually measures

Each bar is one day’s trading. The colouring places it against the recent run, so a session that would have been a record years ago can look entirely unremarkable today. The bar and its colour are answering two different questions at once.

A units control switches between counting coins and counting currency. The two separate sharply while price is moving, because the same amount of money buys very different quantities at different levels.

A smoothing control replaces the bars with a single curve. It is for reading the shape of participation across weeks rather than for judging any individual session.

A bare volume figure ages badly

The numbers this market prints today would have been unimaginable in its early years, and that growth has nothing to do with whether any particular session was busy. A fixed threshold would have described a different market in every era of the record.

Measuring against the recent run repairs that. It gives the figure something the reader already understands to sit against, which is this market as it currently behaves rather than as it once did.

What it does not tell you

It says nothing of direction. A heavy day of selling and a heavy day of buying look identical here, so the view belongs beside price rather than instead of it.

Reported trading is only as good as the venues reporting it. Inflated figures have a long history in this market, and no chart drawn from those reports can see through them.

It cannot separate genuine turnover from the same coins going round repeatedly. A small group trading heavily among themselves leaves the same mark as a broad crowd arriving, and the chart has no way of telling which it is looking at.

How to read it

Elevated. Trading is far heavier than this market has recently run, so something has drawn people in.

Above average. Busier than the recent run without being remarkable.

Below average. Quieter than the recent run, with fewer participants involved.

The Volume dashboard puts Daily Volume next to Volume Momentum, Vol Surge and Effort vs Result.

Common questions

Why compare trading to its own recent level?

Because the figure itself has grown by orders of magnitude across this market’s life. Only a comparison with how it has lately behaved tells a reader whether a day was busy.

What changes when the units are switched?

Whether trading is counted in coins or in currency. The two pull apart when price moves a long way, since the same amount of money buys very different quantities at different levels.

Does heavy trading confirm a move?

It makes a move harder to dismiss as a thin-market accident, because more people were involved. It cannot speak to whether the move carries on.

Can these figures be trusted?

Only as far as the venues reporting them. Inflated numbers have a long history here, and a chart built on the reports cannot look behind them.

Why is there a smoothing option?

To read participation across weeks instead of days. The bars answer what happened yesterday; the curve answers whether interest has been building or draining.