Exchange inflows and outflows: how to read on-chain flows

An exchange inflow is a transfer from an outside wallet into an address that belongs to an exchange, and an outflow is the opposite. Net flow is inflows minus outflows over a window, and it only means something if you know which addresses were counted as the exchange's and how each transfer was valued.

What counts as an exchange flow

Every on-chain transfer has a sender and a receiver. On its own, a blockchain does not say who owns either address. A flow becomes an "exchange flow" only when one side of the transfer is an address known to belong to an exchange. That gives three cases:

• Inflow: the receiver is an exchange address and the sender is not.
• Outflow: the sender is an exchange address and the receiver is not.
• Exchange to exchange: both sides belong to exchanges. When both sides belong to the same exchange, the transfer is an internal move (for example from a hot wallet to a cold wallet) and is left out of the flow totals.

Everything else is a plain transfer between wallets. A transfer to an address nobody has identified stays a transfer, even when it later turns out to be an exchange deposit address.

Where the exchange labels come from

The quality of any flow number depends on the address list behind it. We use one rule: an address counts as an exchange address only if the exchange publishes it itself. Today that source is Binance's proof-of-reserves address list, which the exchange publishes per network.¹ We read it for the four chains we scan (Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base and Bitcoin) and refresh it regularly.

We do not label addresses from explorer tags, community lists, other data providers or guesses from behaviour. That has a cost: exchanges without a published address list do not appear in our flow tables at all. They are not shown, which is different from being shown as zero. If you compare our numbers with a figure from somewhere else, the address list is usually the first reason they differ.

Which transfers are scanned

Flows are only as complete as the scan beneath them. On our side:

• Ethereum, Arbitrum and Base: the transfer events of a curated set of tokens (USDC, USDT, DAI, WETH, WBTC and, on Arbitrum, ARB and Tether's bridged USDT0), each token address taken from the issuer's or the chain's own documentation. On Ethereum we also read whole blocks for native ETH transfers.
• Bitcoin: the large transactions of each new block.

The ERC-20 token standard defines the Transfer event that makes these movements readable for every token that follows it.² A token outside the curated list is not part of the exchange flow tables.

The table on Markets › Exchanges shows the result per exchange and asset: inflow and outflow over 24 hours, net over 24 hours and over 7 days, and the chains involved. Each exchange page, for example Binance, shows the same table for that exchange plus its latest large inflows and outflows.

How a flow is valued in dollars

A transfer moves an amount of a token, not a dollar value. To add up USDC, BTC and ETH in one column, each transfer needs a price at the time it happened. Our rules:

• Stablecoins use the latest answer of their Chainlink price feed, read on-chain.³
• WBTC uses the Hyperliquid BTC mark price times the Chainlink WBTC/BTC ratio.
• ETH and WETH use the Hyperliquid ETH mark price (WETH is redeemable one to one for ETH by its own contract).
• A price is used only while it is fresh. A transfer without a fresh price has no dollar value: it is counted separately and stays out of the dollar columns, instead of being guessed.

The example shows why one headline number is rarely enough. The net figure for all assets hid two opposite movements.

Reading net flow

A common reading goes like this: coins moving onto an exchange are available to trade there, and stablecoins moving onto an exchange are available to spend there. Coins leaving an exchange are going into self-custody, to another venue or into a protocol. Each of these readings is about what becomes possible, not about what anyone did next.

Some details matter more than the direction:

1. Look per asset. A stablecoin inflow and a BTC inflow are different events. Net flow summed over all assets mixes them.
2. Compare windows. One large transfer can dominate a 24-hour total. The 7-day column shows whether it was part of a longer run.
3. Check the size against the usual. An exchange moves large amounts every day for its own operations. A flow is notable when it is large for that exchange and asset, not when it is large in absolute terms.
4. Look at the transaction. Each line in the Whales movements feed links to our own transaction page with the sender, the receiver, the amount and the price basis.

What exchange flows cannot tell you

• Intent. A move to an exchange is not a sale, and a move away from one is not a purchase. Transfers can be collateral for derivatives, payments between companies, market-making inventory or customer withdrawals routed through the exchange.
• The whole market. Only exchanges that publish their addresses are covered, and only on the chains and tokens we scan. Other exchanges are missing, not zero.
• Deposit addresses. Many exchanges give each customer a separate deposit address and sweep those into their main wallets later. A transfer to a deposit address that is not on the published list is a plain transfer to us; the sweep into the listed wallet is what shows up as the inflow, sometimes later.
• Internal bookkeeping. We drop moves between two addresses of the same exchange, but an exchange's own wallets on different chains or at a custodian can still look like flows.
• Off-chain movement. Trades and transfers inside the exchange's own ledger never touch the chain.

Using flows on our pages

The exchanges overview shows net flows per exchange and asset over 24 hours and 7 days, with a short note on how they are counted. The Whales movements feed lists the individual transfers as they are detected, including exchange inflows and outflows, together with large transfers, DEX trades and Hyperliquid positions. If you want to be told about large flows instead of checking, the exchange flow alert in Alerts triggers on a transfer into or out of an exchange above a size you choose.

Read flows as a record of where assets moved and when. They describe custody, not direction.