ICT IPDA — The Interbank Price Delivery Algorithm (20/40/60 Days)

Most traders look at a chart as a record of the tug-of-war between buyers and sellers: somebody is "buying", somebody is "selling", and price is the net result of the struggle. ICT proposes something radically different. In his model, price is not bought — price is delivered. Just as YouTube delivers videos to you according to a recommendation algorithm, the market delivers price to predetermined levels according to a set of rules that ICT named IPDA — the Interbank Price Delivery Algorithm. Was there really one giant algorithm running in bank server rooms and steering prices? Nobody can prove it, and we say so honestly. But as an organizing model — a lens through which the chart stops being noise and becomes a sequence of liquidity raids and returns to imbalances — IPDA is one of the most powerful concepts in the entire method. In this article we take it apart piece by piece: the philosophy of price delivery, the 20/40/60-day lookbacks, quarterly shifts, and a concrete trade plan for BTC and ETH.

What Is IPDA

IPDA stands for Interbank Price Delivery Algorithm. The word "algorithm" simply means a defined set of rules that performs a task. In the ICT model, the market's task is not to "fairly match buyers with sellers" but to efficiently deliver price to the levels where the fuel sits — that is, liquidity.

The whole model rests on two pillars. Every significant price move accomplishes one of two goals:

Goal 1 — rebalance an imbalance. When price has been delivered one-sidedly (a violent impulse with no correction), the chart is left with a gap of inefficient pricing — a Fair Value Gap. Sooner or later the algorithm turns back into that area to "re-trade" it from the other side.

Goal 2 — collect liquidity. The market needs counterparties: for every buy there must be a sell. The biggest pools of resting orders are stop losses — they cluster above old highs and below old lows. That is why price regularly "reaches" for those extremes before making its real move.

The market therefore swings like a pendulum: from liquidity to imbalance and from imbalance to liquidity. That sentence is worth writing on a sticky note above your monitor, because it describes eighty percent of what you see on the BTC daily chart.

How does the algorithm "know" which levels matter? Enter the lookbacks. IPDA references three nested data windows: the last 20, 40 and 60 days of trading. The highest high and the lowest low of each window are institutional reference points — the levels above and below which the most liquidity rests, and to which price is delivered in successive rotations.

How to Spot the IPDA Rhythm on a Chart

The IPDA model is read from the highest timeframe down. Three layers, in this order:

Layer 1 — the quarterly shift. On the weekly or daily chart, markets tend to change direction roughly every 3–4 months. A trend does not run all year — after a dozen or so weeks of expansion comes a reset and a rotation the other way, because only a two-sided move lets the market collect liquidity from both ends of the range. In crypto this rhythm is often amplified by quarterly futures expirations. So the first question of any analysis is: when did the market last change direction, and where in the cycle are we — the beginning, the middle, or near the end?

Layer 2 — the 20/40/60-day levels. On the daily chart, mark the highest high and the lowest low of the last 20, 40 and 60 candles. You get six levels (some may overlap). This is the map: each of those levels is a liquidity pool, and the nearest one in the direction of the prevailing bias is the most probable destination — the draw on liquidity. You repeat the marking ritual once a week; ICT emphasized that roughly every 20 days the market prints a change in price delivery, because fresh liquidity pools have had time to build on both sides.

Layer 3 — the ERL/IRL rotation. Inside the range, price circulates between external liquidity (External Range Liquidity — the highs and lows of the range) and internal liquidity (Internal Range Liquidity — the FVGs inside the range). After collecting ERL, price turns back to IRL; after rebalancing IRL, it heads for the next ERL. We cover the details of this rotation in the article on internal and external range liquidity.

Once you overlay these three layers, the chart starts to look different. A violent BTC dump below a three-week-old low stops being "panic" — it is price being delivered to the 20-day lookback for liquidity. The bounce and rally toward an old high is not "the bulls returning" — it is a rotation to the opposite reference point, rebalancing imbalances along the way.

How to Use IPDA in Practice

IPDA by itself is not an entry signal — it is the frame inside which signals start to make sense. The complete trade flow looks like this:

Step 1 — locate the market in the quarterly cycle. BTC weekly chart: when was the last change of direction? If the trend is already in its third or fourth month, the probability of a reset is rising and aggressively chasing the move is the worst idea available.

Step 2 — mark the 20/40/60-day levels on D1. Six lines, once a week, mechanically.

Step 3 — establish the draw on liquidity. The nearest lookback level in the direction of the daily bias (how to determine it — Daily Bias) is your magnet. Price flows toward it, and you plan trades with that current, not against it.

Step 4 — wait for a false breakout of a 20-day extreme. The classic sequence: price pierces the 20-day high or low, collects liquidity and turns back. That is not a "failed breakout" — it is the algorithm's most repeatable maneuver and your entry window.

Step 5 — drop to an intraday timeframe and watch the clock. Reversals after a liquidity raid print most often inside the killzones — the London open and the New York session work surprisingly well on BTC, because that is when real institutional volume comes in.

Step 6 — confirm with structure. On M15/M5 you wait for a market structure shift (MSS) in the direction of the bias — only that tells you the liquidity raid was fuel-gathering, not the start of a continuation.

Step 7 — enter off a PD array and target the next lookback. The reversal leg leaves behind an FVG or an order block — enter on the retest of that zone, stop beyond the swept extreme, target at the opposite 40- or 60-day level. No further: in this model the algorithm "pays out" to the nearest reference point and then rotates. Aiming beyond it is greed, not analysis.

Example: ETH mid-way through the quarterly cycle, daily bias bullish. Price dips below the 20-day low, prints an M15 MSS to the upside during the New York window and leaves a fresh FVG. Entry on the retest of the gap, stop below the sweep low, target at the 40-day high. That is the entire trade "by the algorithm" — from fuel to destination.

Worth adding: lookback levels, gaps and order blocks add up to a lot of drawing — our SRL indicator marks the key supply and demand zones automatically, so the map draws itself and you focus on the decision.

Common Mistakes

• Treating IPDA as secret knowledge instead of a map. You do not have to believe a server somewhere is steering price. Just mark the 20/40/60-day levels and start observing how price reacts to them — the model defends itself empirically or not at all.
• Skipping the weekly level-marking ritual. Without lookbacks on the chart you are guessing where the move is headed. Six lines once a week is two minutes of work — and without them the rest of the analysis hangs in a vacuum.
• Trading without a daily bias. The algorithm always has a direction. If you do not, you cannot tell a liquidity raid (a counter-bias move, there to be faded) from real delivery (a with-bias move, there to be traded).
• Entries outside the time windows. A reversal at 9:00 PM ET, in the middle of a dead Asian session, is statistically a weaker setup than the identical pattern inside the London or New York killzone.
• Targets beyond the nearest reference point. The market rotates between lookbacks — take profit at the nearest 40/60-day extreme instead of betting on a rally without end.
• Mistaking the model for a guarantee. IPDA organizes probabilities, not the future. There are weeks when price respects the levels to the dollar, and weeks when it slices through them without blinking. Risk management applies always.

IPDA is the conceptual ceiling of the ICT method — the frame in which FVGs, order blocks, liquidity and bias stop being loose tricks and become parts of one machine. The next steps of initiation are the premium and discount map (PD Array Matrix) and the earliest signal of a change in delivery direction — CISD. Start, though, with six lines on the daily chart. The rest will come from observation.

FAQ

Rafał — Krypto Bez Ściemy

Trader and founder of Strefa Tradingu. He’s been breaking crypto down on YouTube for years — no hype, no signals, with a focus on market structure and risk management.

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