podyx, thanks for the explanation.
Check the 1.5k volume bar on this chart. You can see the price going up in almost a straight line during that trading period. I assume that means the ask side got eaten into. If the price had gone down in almost a straight line I would assume the opposite.
You're looking at (at a glance) 15 minute bars? One bar != 1 transaction. Try 5, 3, or 1 minute resolutions here:
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitfinex/btcusd, and you'll see that 1.5k bar get broken down into a bunch of little ones.
As podyx pointed out, it's not that simple. You'll see green 1k bars from 499 market sells/501 market buys, for instance (1 BTC "ate into the ask side"). If the ask side is thin, you'll see the price shoot up.
I think that you are doing the right thing by attempting to make assessments based on various time lines, but also frequently, we are going to see periods of lots of trade activity and some certain level of inactivity... and during consolidation periods (which can last for several days or even for weeks), sometimes it still will not do a whole hell-of-a lot of good to attempt to micro-analyze during those periods because nothing is really happening in any kind of meaningful way during such consolidation periods... but then all of a sudden, we may see a break out in one direction or another and then we may be able to attempt to look at how that break out seemed to occur (was the break out on relatively low volume or high volume and how long did it last and did it cause an additional battle and did it actually cause a break out if we zoom out further?)