A dealer map is a model of who is obliged to trade and where. That is genuinely useful and it is a narrower claim than most marketing makes. The limits below are structural rather than bugs to be fixed in a later version.
It does not know dealer inventory
Nobody publishes it. Every map infers which side dealers are on — either by assuming customers buy, or by accumulating taker flow. Both are estimates with characteristic weaknesses, and where they disagree the honest response is more uncertainty, not a tiebreak.
It does not forecast direction
Positioning describes how a market will move if it moves — the fuel, not the spark. That is the rule running through funding as a crowding gauge, liquidation heatmaps and holder concentration alike. Every one is a risk measure that gets misread as a signal.
It is weaker here than in equities
Options open interest is small against crypto’s spot and perpetual turnover, so hedging flow is diluted — crypto gamma is smaller than it looks. Levels deserve to be held more loosely than the equity equivalents.
It covers a minority of the market
Only a handful of coins have a real book. For everything else there is no gamma to compute, and a product that renders one anyway is manufacturing it — see can you read dealer positioning on altcoins.
It says nothing about your execution
A correct level does not mean you can trade it. Spread, depth and impact decide that, and they are worst in the conditions a map is most interesting — why spreads widen.
Why publish the limits
Because a tool used inside its claims is valuable and the same tool used outside them loses money. Every one of these is checkable, which is the point — a product that will not name where its read stops is asking to be trusted rather than verified.