The coin's all green — is that up or down?

You just bought your first coin, open the price page, and the screen is full of little green blocks. Your stomach tightens: is that up, or down? If you've come from certain stock markets — China's A-shares, say — "green" probably equals "losing money" in your head. Relax for a second — in crypto, the colours are the other way round from those markets.

The answer, straight up

No detours. On the vast majority of crypto exchanges (OKX and Binance included), under their default colours:

• Green candle = up: the close for that stretch is higher than the open.
• Red candle = down: the close for that stretch is lower than the open.

So when you see a screen full of green, your first reaction should be "it's rising" — not the "green, I'm losing" muscle memory from some stock markets. Lock that one in, and you've sidestepped the very first trap beginners fall into.

Why crypto runs opposite to A-shares

This part's actually interesting. There's no single worldwide standard for the red/green colour scheme — it's a habit each market settled into locally.

In mainland China's stock market (and across Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Korea), red is festive and culturally stands for a rise, while green stands for a fall — so a lot of A-share and Hong Kong interfaces are "red up, green down." Western financial markets, on the other hand, are used to green meaning "good / up" and red meaning "bad / down" — and that scheme is the one crypto exchanges around the world ended up adopting. Crypto is a global, broadly Western-tech-stack market, so naturally it follows the "green up, red down" camp.

The upshot: someone who's traded A-shares switches to crypto, instinctively reads green as a fall and red as a rise, and gets the direction completely backwards. That's not you being slow — it's two separate conventions colliding. Once you know the reason, it stops tripping you up.

Can't remember which is which? That's fine. The thing that never changes is which is higher — the close or the open. Higher than the open is up, lower than the open is down. The colour is just a coat of paint over that fact.

The colours can be changed — confirm your screen

Here's the trickier bit: the colour isn't hard-wired — you can change it in settings. Some people coming from A-shares can't stand "green up, red down" and just flip the interface back to the "red up, green down" they're used to; others tap something in settings by accident and don't even notice the colours have swapped.

So just remembering "crypto is green-up, red-down" isn't fully safe. The right habit is: every time you read a chart on a new device or a new interface, spend three seconds confirming what green and red mean. Confirming is simple —

What "all green" actually tells you

Back to your original question: a screen that's "all green" — what does it actually mean?

If you've confirmed your interface is "green-up," then a sea of green does mean price has been rising over that stretch. But here's the cold water: "all green" over which stretch makes an enormous difference.

For the same coin, switch the chart's timeframe from "1-minute" to "1-day" and the picture changes entirely. A run of green candles on the 1-minute chart might just be a few minutes' little bounce, which is nothing on the daily. Flip it around — a long string of green on the daily is what actually looks like a real uptrend. So next time you see "all green," first ask yourself: is this green on the 1-minute, or green on the daily? Different timeframes, worlds apart in meaning. We cover this specifically in reading candlestick charts for beginners — worth reading next.

One more thing: the unfinished candle (usually the one on the far right) can change colour at any moment. It's green now, but closing red a few minutes later is perfectly normal. Don't make decisions off that one flickering candle.

Don't just watch the colour — read the four prices

At the end of the day, colour is just a tool for "scanning at a glance," and it'll mislead you depending on the colour setting. The thing that never changes is the four prices behind every candle: the open, the close, the high and the low (traders call it OHLC).

Those four numbers are the candle's actual body. Close higher than open is a rise no matter whether it's painted green or red; the reverse is a fall. Rather than agonising over red and green, a beginner is better off spending the time getting "one candle = four prices" straight — we take it apart step by step in what one candle is telling you, and once you've read it, no colour scheme on any interface will rattle you again.