How to Track the Crypto Market Without a Trading Terminal?

Tracking Bitcoin and Crypto Popularity on Google Trends

This method is arguably the simplest way to gauge whether significant Bitcoin movements have captured the attention of the general public. Sudden spikes in the popularity of search queries often correlate with local price surges. For instance, rumors about spot ETF listings on October 24 triggered a local bullish rally for BTC, spiking public interest in the cryptocurrency.

• Link to a preset query in Google Trends

Bitcoin interest chart | Source: Google Trends

Monitoring New Coin Listings on Crypto Trackers

It's challenging to keep track of all crypto news, but following new project listings is quite manageable. New coins often experience a short-lived bull rally after their listing, typically lasting a week, before undergoing a correction. Aggregators like Coinmarketcap and CoinGecko list new coins recently introduced on swap exchanges, DEXs, or CEXs. 

Chart of top newly added coins, ranked by 24-hour growth | Source: Coinmarketcap.com

Avoiding Scam Coins When Selecting New Cryptocurrencies

It's widely believed that a cryptocurrency needs to achieve a total market capitalization of $1 million to be considered viable. However, there are other important rules to follow:

• When evaluating projects, check that they have their own website, and ensure the links to their Github and social media are active and don’t redirect to a 404 error. It's generally advised to avoid investing more than $50 at once in coins valued below $1, as these are often highly volatile and lack a lower price limit.
• Encountering coin prices in the millionths of a dollar is normal. For a coin to be delisted, its price must fall below eight zeros on the exchange, provided there are no derivatives associated with it. 
• Be wary of coins with futures, perpetual, and margin trading pairs, especially if their price still includes 4-6 zeros. There's a strong possibility that derivatives create substantial selling pressure on the spot asset. Strategies involving shorting are common in derivatives with an asset price below $1 ($0.0001 – $0.0…01), which can suppress the spot price due to the absence of regular buyers. 

Explore the Gainers & Losers, Trending, and Most Visited Sections on Crypto Aggregators

The Gainers & Losers section highlights coins that have either significantly risen or fallen in price over a day. What makes this tool useful is that it picks out coins already exhibiting a short-term upward or downward trend. It's a practical method to incorporate some lesser-known coins into your portfolio that might bounce back. 

Trending is somewhat akin to Google Trends analysis. However, while Google searches can come from anyone (including our hypothetical taxi driver), the Trending section zeroes in on the interest of more advanced users towards specific projects. This feature compiles the most popular coin search queries on the platform, giving an idea of the market players' focus without diving into numerous thematic chats and channels.

Most Visited works similarly but focuses on coins whose pages have been the most frequently visited by aggregator users. This assists in tracking projects that are beginning to generate buzz before they become widely recognized. If a coin tops this section, it's worth investigating the reason behind its popularity: it might be that the project has announced a new development stage or launched an update.

Monitoring Crypto Trends by Categories via CoinGecko

This feature on CoinGecko compiles portfolios from well-known public funds, individual project categories, and assets held by crypto influencers. It enables the tracking of entire categories of interconnected projects. For instance, you can monitor the trends in SocialFi, Farming-as-a-Service, ZK projects, specific wallet coins, or L2 projects.  

Analyzing On-Chain Metrics 

Platforms like TheBlock provide user-friendly charts tracking activities in L2 projects. These charts help in monitoring metrics like the rate of transaction growth, the increase in new wallets on the network, Total Value Locked (TVL), and the returns from staking pools. Such parameters offer insights into the health of projects, their popularity, and actual functionality usage, which directly influences the demand for particular coins. 

Advanced Techniques

By utilizing the ‘beginner's kit' mentioned earlier, you can advance beyond most new entrants to the crypto world. Yet, there are even more sophisticated tools available that can help in tracking specific events typically overlooked by journalists or mainstream media. 

Tracking Smart Money 

“Smart money” refers to influential investors believed to have exclusive knowledge or insights. Tracking these investors is a standard practice in the stock market, even though it may sometimes resemble a superstition.

Whale Alert is a popular service for tracking large transactions. It's a simple bot functioning as an automated Twitter account. It records substantial transactions in real time, allowing followers to understand the sentiments of major market players. 

Interpreting Whale Alert Signals:

• Transaction from a Wallet to an Exchange: Typically indicates a forthcoming large sale. This is widely regarded as a bearish signal.
• Several Large Transfers to a Single Exchange: Implies that someone is amassing coins in their account for a future sale. Monitor which coins are being transferred. If they are stablecoins, they are likely to be exchanged for altcoins.
• Large Withdrawal from an Exchange: When a whale withdraws coins for long-term holding, it's usually viewed as a neutral signal. 

Additionally, you can track the activities of ‘smart money' on the Arkham Intelligence service. This platform specializes in on-chain analysis and operates as an open marketplace for blockchain information trading. Its integrated filter feature allows for real-time tracking of ‘smart trades.' Setting up the filter for transactions of ‘from $50,000' in ‘the last hour' provides a list of addresses to monitor. You can then ‘mark' these addresses to observe their future actions, including transactions, purchases, and sales, through the Dashboard tab. 

Example of ‘smart trades' with a filter set for price and recent execution time | Source: platform.arkhamintelligence.com

Using Analytical Dashboards 

For example, the Dune platform offers real-time updates on analytical charts featuring a variety of metrics. These charts are crafted daily by hundreds of users and can be instrumental in making informed trading decisions. There are two dashboards that you can use to keep track of cryptocurrency activities.

Token God Mode

This is a free version of a premium tool designed for verifying information about new coins. Here's how it works: you input a coin's blockchain address and select a specific time frame. The tool then provides you with the most recent on-chain data about that coin. Using this tool, you can gather information on token accumulation, discover the top 100 traders, obtain their wallet addresses for monitoring, and find out the actual trading volume of the project on DEX platforms. 

Example of Token God Mode usage by defimochi for the TET token on Dune.io | Source: dune.io

GMX Trader Leaderboard

This feature is a dashboard that tracks the top 100 most successful on-chain traders across various blockchains. Using this tool, you can gain insights into their win rates (the percentage of profitable trades), both their realized and unrealized profit and loss (P&L), and other relevant data. These insights can be instrumental in refining your trading strategy. 

Chart of 100 Successful On-Chain Traders | Source: dune.io

MEV Bot Filter

The MEV-bot filter, available through DeBank, helps in isolating the wallets of active and profitable traders for a specific cryptocurrency. Additionally, this service is useful for analyzing the wallet contents of the most successful traders, identified via the Token God Mode (referenced earlier). By examining their trade history and the assets in their balances, you have the opportunity to mimic their trading strategies by replicating their on-chain transactions. 

Keep an Eye on Investment Fund Portfolios

This strategy allows you to monitor in real-time the fluctuations in value and composition of large investment funds' portfolios, including those of a16z, Galaxy Capital, Delphi Digital, J. P. Morgan, or Ubisoft Entertainment. These funds are categorized by a tier system, ranging from 1 (indicating good performance) to 5 (indicating poor performance). Each portfolio comes with a dashboard that provides an investment map and a tracker for asset returns. Platforms like Cryptorank can be used to locate specific funds and their portfolios.

A dedicated section provides insights into the number of current fundraising activities and the capital involved. Applying a category filter gives an overview of the sectors major crypto investors are focusing on for the next bullish market phase. For example, between 2022 and 2023, there was a notable trend of investments flowing into blockchain infrastructure and DeFi projects. 

Fundraising Trends by Number of Investment Rounds | Source: CryptoRank.io

Verify Token Unlock Phases

Token locking is a key strategy in Proof of Stake (PoS) projects, where the release of tokens is staggered over time to prevent a sharp fall in asset price due to sudden mass sales. Typically, the unlocking process spans from three months to two years. Coin volatility tends to increase significantly after these unlocks, making market corrections more likely. Information about token unlock dates can typically be found on sites like Cryptorank.

Keep Up with Upcoming Events

Every project has its roadmaps and associated developmental events. Therefore, many information aggregators provide an ‘Events' section, allowing you to stay abreast of significant upcoming market events, including AMAs, recaps, briefings, token unlock dates, forthcoming votes, the initiation of liquidity pools, and more. Such calendars enable you to track these events efficiently.

Watch Jim Cramer

While it may border on superstition, watching Jim Cramer, the host of CNN's investment show ‘Mad Money', can be quite insightful. He's known for a peculiar trend where most of his trading predictions end up happening in the exact opposite way. There's a bit of an informal rule among traders: if Jim Cramer shows an interest in buying Bitcoin, it might be a cue to sell, and conversely, when he speaks negatively about crypto, it could indicate an upcoming bullish trend. The reasoning behind this pattern isn't widely questioned; people tend to just watch for when Jim starts advocating for the sale of Bitcoin.

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