Why do crypto candles have long wicks? 62,357 candles measured
In 61.82% of Binance Bitcoin's hourly candles, the wicks together were longer than the body. See wick sizes for 12 markets and busy vs quiet years.
On Binance, 61.82% of Bitcoin's hourly candles had wicks that together were longer than the body. That is 62,357 hourly candles from September 2019 to October 2026. The median body was 0.23% and the median high-to-low range was 0.64%, so most of the range sat in the wicks.
Long wicks are the normal shape of a candle, not a rare event. Busy years made wicks bigger, but not more common: about 6 in 10 candles had wicks longer than the body on 1-hour, 4-hour and daily bars alike. These are past cases, not a forecast.
For the basics of reading a candle, see How to read a candlestick chart.
What is a wick, and what is a body?
A candle shows four prices for a span of time: open, high, low and close. (New to candles? Start with how to read a candlestick chart.) The body is the part between the open and the close. The wicks are the thin lines that reach up to the high and down to the low.
Here is a made-up example. An hour opens at 100, drops to 98, climbs to 103 and closes at 101. The body is 1 (from 100 to 101). The lower wick is 2 (from 100 down to 98). The upper wick is 2 (from 101 up to 103). The wicks add up to 4, which is more than the body.
How often are wicks longer than the body?
We checked how often the two wicks added together were longer than the body. We also measured the median wick share: the part of the candle's total range that sits in the wicks. The median is the middle value when you sort a list from lowest to highest.
Here are one-hour candles for 10 Binance USDT perps (a perp is a futures contract that never expires) and two Coinbase spot markets.
| Market | Hourly candles | Median body | Median range | Median wick share of range | Wicks longer than body |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Binance BTC | 62,357 | 0.23% | 0.64% | 59.09% | 61.82% |
| Binance ETH | 60,448 | 0.31% | 0.87% | 58.93% | 61.62% |
| Binance SOL | 53,441 | 0.49% | 1.26% | 56.70% | 58.42% |
| Binance XRP | 59,488 | 0.37% | 0.95% | 58.14% | 60.33% |
| Binance DOGE | 55,023 | 0.41% | 1.09% | 58.46% | 60.62% |
| Binance ADA | 58,888 | 0.45% | 1.13% | 57.14% | 58.61% |
| Binance AVAX | 53,225 | 0.51% | 1.28% | 56.36% | 57.65% |
| Binance LINK | 59,224 | 0.48% | 1.23% | 56.62% | 58.46% |
| Binance BNB | 58,648 | 0.30% | 0.77% | 56.26% | 57.64% |
| Binance TRX | 59,272 | 0.24% | 0.59% | 55.26% | 56.01% |
| Coinbase BTC-USD | 98,564 | 0.24% | 0.62% | 56.29% | 57.56% |
| Coinbase ETH-USD | 91,155 | 0.34% | 0.90% | 56.56% | 57.90% |
Every market had wicks longer than the body in more than half of its candles, from 56.01% (TRX) to 61.82% (BTC). Bitcoin's hourly range was small, but its wicks took a slightly bigger share of it than the wilder coins' wicks did.
Binance rows start between September 2019 and September 2020, Coinbase BTC-USD in July 2015 and ETH-USD in May 2016, so rows cover different years.
Do longer bars have longer wicks?
In dollars and percent, yes. In shape, no. Here is Binance Bitcoin on three bar sizes.
| Bar size | Bars | Median body | Median range | Median wick share | Wicks longer than body |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 hour | 62,357 | 0.23% | 0.64% | 59.09% | 61.82% |
| 4 hours | 15,589 | 0.47% | 1.35% | 60.33% | 63.19% |
| 1 day | 2,599 | 1.37% | 3.74% | 59.67% | 61.75% |
The range grows with the bar size, but the split between body and wicks stays about the same.
Why does this happen?
A candle's range covers every price the bar touched. The body covers only two moments, the start and the end. Price rarely moves in a straight line, so it wanders past the open and close. That wandering becomes the wicks.
Our numbers fit this simple picture. On Binance Bitcoin, the link between one hour's price change and the next hour's was only −0.02 (a value of 0 means no link; 1 means a perfect link). So one hour's direction said almost nothing about the next hour's.
The size of a move is different. When we ignore direction, Bitcoin's hourly moves had a link of 0.30 with the next hour's. A big hour tended to be followed by another big hour. So big candles, and the big wicks that come with them, tend to show up in groups. We explain this more in volatility clustering.
How far does price reach within the next hour?
We measured how far the next hour reached from the previous hour's close: the lowest price it touched, and the highest. This counts the whole reach, body and wick together.
Here is each Binance coin, over its full history, for the next hour.
| Coin | Low went 1% below close | Low went 2% below | High went 1% above | High went 2% above |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BTC | 9.41% | 2.16% | 8.90% | 1.90% |
| ETH | 15.50% | 4.15% | 14.60% | 3.48% |
| SOL | 26.64% | 8.66% | 25.60% | 8.30% |
| XRP | 19.32% | 6.07% | 17.60% | 5.42% |
| DOGE | 23.16% | 7.94% | 21.46% | 7.20% |
| ADA | 22.94% | 6.63% | 21.88% | 6.22% |
| AVAX | 27.47% | 9.31% | 26.27% | 8.70% |
| LINK | 25.29% | 7.48% | 24.43% | 6.82% |
| BNB | 13.86% | 3.82% | 12.52% | 3.11% |
| TRX | 11.46% | 3.49% | 10.02% | 2.90% |
For Bitcoin, about 1 hour in 11 had a low at least 1% under the prior close. For Solana and Avalanche it was about 1 hour in 4. Down wicks reached 1% a little more often than up wicks in every coin.
We cannot split single hours into "busy" and "quiet" with these results. We can split years. Here is Binance Bitcoin by year.
| Year | Median hourly range | Low went 1% below close | Low went 2% below | Wicks longer than body |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 (from Sept 8) | 0.58% | 8.03% | 1.97% | 65.64% |
| 2020 | 0.70% | 11.02% | 2.97% | 65.00% |
| 2021 | 1.08% | 20.21% | 5.33% | 62.60% |
| 2022 | 0.73% | 11.22% | 2.52% | 63.41% |
| 2023 | 0.45% | 5.01% | 0.87% | 63.41% |
| 2024 | 0.62% | 7.86% | 1.64% | 59.76% |
| 2025 | 0.50% | 5.03% | 0.87% | 57.43% |
| 2026 (to Oct 19) | 0.49% | 5.12% | 0.68% | 59.42% |
In 2021, a 1% dip within the next hour happened in about one hour in five. In 2023 it was about one in twenty. But the wick-versus-body mix barely moved between those years: 62.60% and 63.41%. Busy periods made wicks bigger, not more common. Since 2024 the share has been a little lower, between 57.43% and 59.76%.
The reach counts use hourly highs and lows. They do not know which came first inside the hour.
Do stop orders cause long wicks?
A stop order is an order that waits until price reaches a level you choose, then turns into a regular order. If many traders put stops near the same level, reaching it can set off many orders at once. That can push price a bit further for a moment, then price may come back.
We did not measure stop orders. Price bars cannot see them. A wick could also come from a thin market, from news, or from forced closures of trades (called liquidations; see how liquidation works). So we do not claim a cause for any wick. We only measured how big wicks are and how often they happen. If you set stops, our test of stop-loss distance shows how often price touched a level within a day.
What does this test not cover?
- What price did after a long wick. That is a different test.
- Bars shorter than one hour, or a busy week inside a quiet year.
- Why any single wick happened.
How we measured this
We used completed hourly, 4-hour and daily bars from 10 Binance USDT perps and two Coinbase spot markets, through October 19, 2026. Four-hour bars were built from four hourly bars on the UTC grid, and only when all four were present. For each bar, the body is the gap between open and close. The wicks are the rest of the range. We skipped bars with zero range. The reach table checks, for every hourly close, whether the next hour's low or high touched a set distance from that close. Windows overlap, since every hour is a starting point, so the hours are not independent cases. We did not test a trading rule or include fees.
Try this in Comparand
With Comparand connected to your AI app, you can check wicks yourself:
- "Get 1-hour bars for Binance BTCUSDT for the last 7 days. For each hour, show the body and the two wicks as a share of the range." The tool is venue_bars. It returns the open, high, low, close and volume of completed bars, and it is free on every key.
- "Show ZEC's hourly liquidation totals on Hyperliquid for September 1, 2026." The tool is hl_liquidations_series. It returns one coin's liquidation totals per complete UTC hour (or day), and costs $0.005 per call on pay as you go.
These totals are for Hyperliquid only, so compare them with Hyperliquid prices for the same coin. Your agent does the comparing. The tools do not label wicks or give causes. Our guide to the most volatile hours of the day shows when moves are biggest. You can try 3 coins free or read the tool docs.
The short version
- 61.82% of Binance Bitcoin's hourly candles had wicks longer than the body (62,357 candles), and every market we checked was above 56%.
- The split between body and wicks stayed near the same on 1-hour, 4-hour and daily bars.
- In busy 2021 a 1% dip within the next hour happened in 20.21% of hours; in 2023, 5.01%.
- We cannot say if stop orders, thin trading or news caused any wick.
- Past cases, not a forecast.
Questions people ask
What is a wick on a crypto candle?
A wick is the thin line above or below a candle's body. It shows the highest or lowest price reached during the bar, beyond where the bar opened and closed.
Why do crypto candles have long wicks?
A candle's range records every price the bar touched, while its body records only the open and the close. In our test, 61.82% of Binance Bitcoin's 62,357 hourly candles had wicks that together were longer than the body.
Are long wicks more common in busy markets?
Wicks get longer in dollars and percent, but the mix stayed similar. On Binance Bitcoin, the median hourly range was 1.08% in 2021 and 0.45% in 2023, yet wicks beat the body in 62.60% and 63.41% of candles.
Do long wicks prove someone is hunting stop orders?
No. Our test measured wick sizes from price bars. It cannot see stop orders or who placed them, so it cannot confirm or rule out a special cause.