How to Read Crypto Charts: A Beginner's Guide on ripr

By ripr Editorial Team7 Nov 20267 min read

Learning how to read crypto charts comes down to five reads, and on ripr all five sit on one coin page: the candles, the timeframe, the volume bars, the coin's own numbers, and your own levels. A chart is a picture of what people have already paid for a coin, so it will never tell you what happens next. What it does tell you is how a coin is behaving right now, which is enough to stop you buying blind.

How to read crypto charts on ripr: the five reads

On ripr you read a crypto chart in the same five steps every time, and once it is a habit it takes about a minute per coin.

Open the coin. Get the right chart in front of you.
Read the candles. What did each block of time do?
Set the timeframe. Zoom to the scale you are trading on.
Read the volume. Did anyone show up for that move?
Read the numbers beside the chart. Decide how much trust the chart has earned.

Start from ripr's Explore screen, which lists trending, newly launched and upcoming coins alongside your watchlists, or search by name, ticker or full contract address. A contract address is a token's unique on-chain ID on Solana, and pasting it in full is the surest way to know you opened the coin you meant and not a copycat with the same ticker.

Then decide what the chart is plotting. ripr's web chart reads as price, market cap or volume, in US dollars or in SOL. Market cap is the price multiplied by the coin's supply, so it tracks price on a scale that is easier to picture. Pick one and stay with it.

What a candlestick on a crypto chart means

A candlestick on a crypto chart is one block of time, and every candle on a ripr coin page carries four prices: where that block opened, where it closed, and the two extremes the coin touched in between. The body, the fat part, runs between the open and the close: green when the coin finished above where it started, red when it finished below. The thin lines above and below, called wicks, reach the top and bottom of the range.

Three shapes carry most of the meaning for a beginner:

A long body with stubby wicks. One side was in control for the whole block.
A small body with long wicks at both ends. Buyers and sellers traded hard and settled nothing.
A long wick at one end only. The price went there and came straight back, so nobody defended it.

On ripr's web chart the candle at the right-hand edge is still being built out of the individual trades as they land, and fills far outside the recent range are filtered out so one odd print cannot bend the shape you are reading. Each new trade goes onto the chart as soon as it is decoded, so that edge candle grows on its own.

Which chart timeframe should a beginner use?

As a beginner on ripr, start with two timeframes and ignore the rest: five minutes for what is happening now, one hour for whether it means anything. The timeframe is how much time each candle covers, and changing it moves the story further than any other setting: the same coin can look like a collapse on a one-minute chart and a quiet afternoon on a one-hour chart, and both pictures are true.

ripr's web chart carries eight timeframes, from one second up to one day, and on iOS and Android the app draws its own live charts from a tick view up to one-day ranges. Each chart loads the most recent 300 candles for the interval you pick and keeps them updating live, so you know the span you are reading: one second covers roughly the last five minutes, one hour a bit under two weeks.

A move that looks violent at one second and invisible at one hour was noise.

How to read volume next to price on ripr

Volume on a ripr chart is how much of a coin actually changed hands in each block of time, and it tests whether a price move had anyone behind it. The web chart can show volume in place of price, and the coin page lists recent trades as they arrive over a live streaming connection, with no refresh needed.

Read the two together:

Price climbing, volume growing. People are genuinely buying the move.
Price climbing, volume thin. A few small orders are walking an empty market upward.
A tall volume bar with the price going nowhere. Plenty of coin changed hands and neither side won, so the next move matters.

New coins exaggerate all of it, and your own order is part of the picture. ripr's help centre explains that price moves quickly on new coins because they carry lighter liquidity while attention is high, and that your buy size and sell size move the price in a thin market. So watch the estimate as you type: if the amount of coin you would get sags when you add a digit, you have found the edge of the chart you were reading. Keep early entries small and leave sudden spikes alone.

What to check beside the chart before you trade

Beside the chart, a ripr coin page carries three things that decide how much weight the chart deserves: who holds the supply, the coin's warnings and notices, and, on a young coin, its curve progress. The candles cannot tell you any of them.

Who holds the supply. The coin page shows how much of a coin the top 10 holders, the top 50 and the creator hold, not counting pools and vaults. One long-running Solana meme coin shows around 60,000 holders in ripr's market data, where a coin launched this morning might show a few dozen. The same candle means different things on those two charts.

Warnings and notices. Before you buy, ripr shows warnings for known rug patterns: a creator holding unlocked liquidity, liquidity already pulled, a coordinated launch. On iOS and Android the coin page also tells you when a coin is under review, has low liquidity, has paused prices or is still being checked. ripr says plainly that not seeing a warning never means a coin is safe, so a beautiful chart with a warning on it is still a warning.

Curve progress. If the coin is still on a bonding curve, where the price follows a formula as people buy in, ripr shows its progress toward graduation, live as the coin trades. Early on a curve a handful of buys can draw a steep chart, so read the progress before you read the slope. Our guide to spotting a risky meme coin walks the full set of checks in order.

Frequently asked questions

Can a crypto chart predict where a coin's price will go?

No. A crypto chart is a record of trades that have already happened, so it describes how a coin is behaving rather than what it will do next. ripr's help centre tells readers that no one can promise future market outcomes, and to ignore anyone who claims otherwise.

Do I need indicators to read a crypto chart?

No. Candles, the timeframe and volume answer most beginner questions on their own, and piling tools onto a chart before you can read a bare one hides the price rather than explaining it. When you want more, ripr's desktop web chart includes 31 drawing tools and 4 technical indicators.

Can I read crypto charts on my phone?

Yes. ripr's iOS and Android apps draw their own live charts, with a tick view and one-minute to one-day ranges, plus a price or market-cap toggle, your entry line, markers for your own trades, and draggable take-profit and stop-loss lines.

Why does a new coin's chart move so violently?

A new coin usually carries lighter liquidity while a lot of people are watching it, so each trade moves the price further than it would on an older coin. ripr's help centre suggests smaller first entries, splitting bigger trades into parts, and expecting that volatility.

Put the chart to work on ripr

Once you can read a chart, mark the two levels that matter before you trade: where you would buy, and where you would accept that the idea was wrong. ripr's desktop web chart carries 31 drawing tools for exactly that, plus a buy button that trades in one click at a pre-filled amount.

Then let those levels act for you. On iOS and Android, and on the desktop web chart, you can drag take-profit and stop-loss lines onto a coin, and they sell for you while the app or the coin page is open, so your exit is chosen before the candle arrives rather than during it. No order is certain to fill in a fast market, which is another reason to pick levels while nothing is moving.

The help centre's routine for trading more safely adds the rest: check the name and ticker, start small, review the final amounts and keep spare SOL for fees.

Open any coin in Explore, run the five reads once, and say out loud what the chart is telling you before you touch an amount. Our guide to taking profits on meme coins picks the story up at the exit.

Last verified 2 November 2026. This article is published by ripr, which builds an app for trading Solana coins. Nothing here is financial advice.